20-letter words containing b, a, e, l
- royal british legion — an organization founded in 1921 to provide services and assistance for former members of the armed forces
- sailor's breastplate — a knot consisting of three overlapping loops formed by a single rope passed alternately over and under itself at crossings.
- saint john ambulance — an organization that provides first aid and first-aid training
- scream bloody murder — Law. the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law. In the U.S., special statutory definitions include murder committed with malice aforethought, characterized by deliberation or premeditation or occurring during the commission of another serious crime, as robbery or arson (first-degree murder) and murder by intent but without deliberation or premeditation (second-degree murder)
- self-belaying system — (in climbing) equipment used to pay out rope as required and thus enable a climber to self-belay
- sell a bill of goods — a quantity or consignment of salable items, as an order, shipment, etc.
- semiautobiographical — pertaining to or being a fictionalized account of an author's own life.
- server message block — (protocol) (SMB) A client/server protocol that provides file and printer sharing between computers. In addition SMB can share serial ports and communications abstractions such as named pipes and mail slots. SMB is similar to remote procedure call (RPC) specialised for file system access. SMB was developed by Intel, Microsoft, and IBM in the early 1980s. It has also had input from Xerox and 3Com. It is the native method of file and print sharing for Microsoft operating systems; where it is called Microsoft Networking. Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95, and Windows NT all include SMB clients and servers. SMB is also used by OS/2, Lan Manager and Banyan Vines. There are SMB servers and clients for Unix, for example Samba and smbclient. SMB is a presentation layer protocol structured as a large set of commands (Server Message Blocks). There are commands to support file sharing, printer sharing, user authentication, resource browsing, and other miscellaneous functions. As clients and servers may implement different versions ("dialects") of the protocol they negotiate before starting a session. The redirector packages SMB requests into a network control block (NBC) structure that can be sent across the network to a remote device. SMB originally ran on top of the lower level protocols NetBEUI and NetBIOS, but now typically runs over TCP/IP. Microsoft have developed an extended version of SMB for the Internet, the Common Internet File System (CIFS), which in most cases replaces SMB. CIFS runs only runs over TCP/IP.
- set the ball rolling — to open or initiate (an action, discussion, movement, etc)
- sir william berkeley — Busby [buhz-bee] /ˈbʌz bi/ (Show IPA), (William Berkeley Enos) 1895–1976, U.S. choreographer and musical-film director.
- skull and crossbones — a representation of a front view of a human skull above two crossed bones, originally used on pirates' flags and now used as a warning sign, as in designating substances as poisons.
- sodium metabisulfite — Sodium metabisulfite is a crystalline compound used as an antioxidant.
- special boat service — a unit of the Royal Marines specializing in reconnaissance and sabotage
- spherical aberration — variation in focal length of a lens or mirror from center to edge, due to its spherical shape.
- splice the mainbrace — to issue and partake of an extra allocation of alcoholic spirits
- spotted crane's-bill — the American wild geranium, Geranium maculatum.
- star spangled banner — Stars and Stripes.
- star-spangled banner — Stars and Stripes.
- stefan-boltzmann law — the law stating that the total energy radiated from a blackbody is proportional to the fourth power of its absolute temperature.
- subjective idea-list — a doctrine that the world has no existence independent of sensations or ideas.
- television broadcast — sth shown on tv
- tetrahydrocannabinol — a compound, C 21 H 30 O 2 , that is the physiologically active component in cannabis preparations (marijuana, hashish, etc.) derived from the Indian hemp plant or produced synthetically. Abbreviation: THC.
- that will be the day — I look forward to that
- the (whole) ballgame — the main or decisive factor, event, etc.
- the beautiful people — rich, fashionable people in international high society
- the canterbury tales — an uncompleted sequence of tales by Chaucer, written for the most part after 1387.
- to be at loggerheads — to be in conflict
- to be walking on air — If you say that you are walking on air or floating on air, you mean that you feel extremely happy about something.
- to burst into flames — If something bursts into flames or bursts into flame, it suddenly starts burning strongly.
- to keep your balance — If you keep your balance, for example, when standing in a moving vehicle, you remain steady and do not fall over. If you lose your balance, you become unsteady and fall over.
- to scrape the barrel — If you say that someone is scraping the barrel, or scraping the bottom of the barrel, you disapprove of the fact that they are using or doing something of extremely poor quality.
- travelling-wave tube — an electronic tube in which an electron beam interacts with a distributed high-frequency magnetic field so that energy is transferred from the beam to the field
- tribromoacetaldehyde — bromal.
- tropical disturbance — a very weak, or incipient, tropical cyclone.
- united arab republic — a name given the union of Egypt and Syria from 1958 to 1961; after that, the official name of Egypt alone until 1971. Abbreviation: U.A.R.
- universal serial bus — (hardware, standard) (USB) An external peripheral interface standard for communication between a computer and external peripherals over an inexpensive cable using biserial transmission. USB is intended to replace existing serial ports, parallel ports, keyboard, and monitor connectors and be used with keyboards, mice, monitors, printers, and possibly some low-speed scanners and removable hard drives. For faster devices existing IDE, SCSI, or emerging FC-AL or FireWire interfaces can be used. USB works at 12 Mbps with specific consideration for low cost peripherals. It supports up to 127 devices and both isochronous and asynchronous data transfers. Cables can be up to five metres long and it includes built-in power distribution for low power devices. It supports daisy chaining through a tiered star multidrop topology. A USB cable has a rectangular "Type A" plug at the computer end and a square "Type B" plug at the peripheral end. Before March 1996 Intel started to integrate the necessary logic into PC chip sets and encourage other manufacturers to do likewise. It was widely available by 1997. Later versions of Windows 95 included support for it. It was standard on Macintosh computers in 1999. The USB 2.0 specification was released in 2000 to allow USB to compete with Firewire etc. USB 2.0 is backward compatible with USB 1.1 but works at 480 Mbps.
- vertical combination — the integration within one company of individual businesses working separately in related phases of the production and sale of a product.
- vertical lift bridge — lift bridge.
- walton and weybridge — a city in Surrey, SE England: a London suburb.
- war of the rebellion — American Civil War.
- wardrobe malfunction — an embarrassing situation caused by the clothes a person is wearing
- watch sb like a hawk — If you watch someone like a hawk, you observe them very carefully, usually to make sure that they do not make a mistake or do something you do not want them to do.
- westminster assembly — a convocation that met at Westminster, London, 1643–49, and formulated the articles of faith (Westminster Confession of Faith) that are accepted as authoritative by most Presbyterian churches.
- wet-bulb temperature — The wet-bulb temperature is the temperature reached by a small amount of liquid evaporating in a large amount of an unsaturated air-vapor mixture.
- white bush (scallop) — a variety of summer squash having a saucer-shaped white fruit, scalloped around the edges
- wilson cloud chamber — cloud chamber.
- yellow-billed magpie — either of two corvine birds, Pica pica (black-billed magpie) of Eurasia and North America, or P. nuttalli (yellow-billed magpie) of California, having long, graduated tails, black-and-white plumage, and noisy, mischievous habits.
- yellow-breasted chat — an American warbler, Icteria virens, having a yellow throat and breast and greenish-brown upper parts and noted for imitating the songs of other species.