0%

14-letter words containing b, a, l, i, s

  • baranof island — an island off SE Alaska, in the western part of the Alexander Archipelago. Area: 4162 sq km (1607 sq miles)
  • barbara liskov — (person)   Professor Barbara Liskov was the first US woman to be awarded a PhD in computing, and her innovations can be found in every modern programming language. She currently (2009) heads the Programming Methodology Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Liskov's design innovations have, over the decades, made software more reliable and easier to maintain. She has invented two computer progamming languages: CLU, an object-orientated language, and Argus, a distributed programming language. Liskov's research forms the basis of modern programming languages such as Java, C# and C++. One of the biggest impacts of her work came from her contributions to the use of data abstraction, a method for organising complex programs. See Liskov substitution principle. In June 2009 she will receive the A. M. Turing Award.
  • barium sulfate — an odorless, tasteless, white powder, BaSO4, insoluble in water: it is used as a paint pigment, as a filler for paper, textiles , etc., and as an opaque substance that is ingested to aid in making diagnostic X-rays of the stomach and intestine
  • barium sulfide — a gray or yellowish-green, water-soluble, poisonous powder, BaS, used chiefly as a depilatory and as an intermediate in the synthesis of pigments, especially lithopone.
  • barrel shifter — (hardware)   A hardware device that can shift or rotate a data word by any number of bits in a single operation. It is implemented like a multiplexor, each output can be connected to any input depending on the shift distance.
  • barrier island — a long island, parallel to the coastline, formed from a ridge of sand (barrier beach) thrown up by the waves, that serves the shore as a protective barrier against tidal waves, storms, etc.
  • basal ganglion — any of several masses of gray matter in each cerebral hemisphere.
  • bascule bridge — a kind of drawbridge counterweighted so that it can be raised and lowered easily
  • bascule-bridge — a device operating like a balance or seesaw, especially an arrangement of a movable bridge (bascule bridge) by which the rising floor or section is counterbalanced by a weight.
  • bastard ridley — ridley (def 1).
  • bastard-ridley — ridley (def 1).
  • battle cruiser — A battle cruiser is a large fast warship that is lighter than a battleship and moves more easily.
  • battle of wits — If you refer to a situation as a battle of wits, you mean that it involves people with opposing aims who compete with each other using their intelligence, rather than force.
  • battle station — the place or position that one is assigned to for battle or in an emergency.
  • batwing sleeve — a sleeve of a garment with a deep armhole and a tight wrist
  • bazillionaires — Plural form of bazillionaire.
  • belisha beacon — a flashing light in an orange globe mounted on a post, indicating a pedestrian crossing on a road
  • belletristical — relating to the fine arts
  • bellingshausen — Fabian Gottlieb von [fey-bee-uh n-got-leeb von] /ˈfeɪ bi ənˈgɒt lib vɒn/ (Show IPA), (Faddey Faddeyevich Bellingshauzen) 1778–1852, Russian naval officer and explorer.
  • belvoir castle — a castle in Leicestershire, near Grantham (in Lincolnshire): seat of the Dukes of Rutland; rebuilt by James Wyatt in 1816
  • beneficialness — the state of being beneficial
  • berkner island — an island in Antarctica, in the S Weddell Sea, between the Ronne Ice Shelf and the Filchner Ice Shelf.
  • bicuspid valve — mitral valve
  • bidialectalism — the state of being bidialectal
  • bildungsromane — a type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist.
  • bilious attack — a group of symptoms consisting of headache, abdominal pain, and constipation
  • billy no-mates — a person with no friends
  • bioregionalism — the conviction that environmental and social policies should be determined by the bioregion rather than economics or politics
  • bioregionalist — someone who believes in bioregionalism
  • biostatistical — relating to biostatistics
  • bipolarisation — the act of bipolarising
  • biscuit barrel — an airtight container of circular section equipped with a lid and used for storing biscuits
  • bitmap display — (hardware)   A computer output device where each pixel displayed on the monitor screen corresponds directly to one or more bits in the computer's video memory. Such a display can be updated extremely rapidly since changing a pixel involves only a single processor write to memory compared with a terminal or VDU connected via a serial line where the speed of the serial line limits the speed at which the display can be changed. Most modern personal computers and workstations have bitmap displays, allowing the efficient use of graphical user interfaces, interactive graphics and a choice of on-screen fonts. Some more expensive systems still delegate graphics operations to dedicated hardware such as graphics accelerators. The bitmap display might be traced back to the earliest days of computing when the Manchester University Mark I(?) computer, developed by F.C. Williams and T. Kilburn shortly after the Second World War. This used a storage tube as its working memory. Phosphor dots were used to store single bits of data which could be read by the user and interpreted as binary numbers.
  • black as night — totally dark
  • black diamonds — carbonado1 .
  • black selenium — an allotropic form of selenium occurring as a black, amorphous, water-insoluble, light-sensitive powder: used chiefly in photoelectric cells.
  • black skipjack — a small spotted tuna, Euthynnus yaito, of Indo-Pacific seas
  • black squirrel — a fox squirrel or gray squirrel in that color phase in which the fur is black.
  • blacktip shark — a widely distributed sand shark, Charcharinus limbatus, having fins that appear to have been dipped in ink, inhabiting shallow waters of warm seas.
  • blade-shearing — the shearing of sheep using hand shears
  • blanket finish — a finish so close that a blanket would cover all the contestants involved
  • blanket stitch — a strong reinforcing stitch for the edges of blankets and other thick material
  • blanket-stitch — a basic sewing stitch in which widely spaced, interlocking loops, or purls, are formed, used for cutwork, as a decorative finish for edges, etc.
  • blind as a bat — having extremely poor eyesight
  • blind staggers — the staggers
  • blind stamping — an impression on a book cover without using colour or gold leaf
  • blister-packed — presented in a blister pack
  • block capitals — Block capitals are simple capital letters that are not decorated in any way.
  • block sampling — the selection of a corpus for statistical literary analysis by random selection of a starting point and consideration of the continuous passage following it
  • blue mountains — a mountain range in the US, in NE Oregon and SE Washington. Highest peak: Rock Creek Butte, 2773 m (9097 ft)
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?