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19-letter words containing b, d

  • bismuth oxychloride — a white, crystalline, water-insoluble powder, BiOCl, used chiefly in the manufacture of pigments, face powders, and artificial pearls.
  • bit-paired keyboard — (hardware)   (Obsolete, or "bit-shift keyboard") A non-standard keyboard layout that seems to have originated with the Teletype ASR-33 and remained common for several years on early computer equipment. The ASR-33 was a mechanical device (see EOU), so the only way to generate the character codes from keystrokes was by some physical linkage. The design of the ASR-33 assigned each character key a basic pattern that could be modified by flipping bits if the SHIFT or the CTRL key was pressed. In order to avoid making the thing more of a Rube Goldberg kluge than it already was, the design had to group characters that shared the same basic bit pattern on one key. Looking at the ASCII chart, we find: high low bits bits 0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001 010 ! " # $ % & ' ( ) 011 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 This is why the characters !"#$%&'() appear where they do on a Teletype (thankfully, they didn't use shift-0 for space). This was *not* the weirdest variant of the QWERTY layout widely seen, by the way; that prize should probably go to one of several (differing) arrangements on IBM's even clunkier 026 and 029 card punches. When electronic terminals became popular, in the early 1970s, there was no agreement in the industry over how the keyboards should be laid out. Some vendors opted to emulate the Teletype keyboard, while others used the flexibility of electronic circuitry to make their product look like an office typewriter. These alternatives became known as "bit-paired" and "typewriter-paired" keyboards. To a hacker, the bit-paired keyboard seemed far more logical - and because most hackers in those days had never learned to touch-type, there was little pressure from the pioneering users to adapt keyboards to the typewriter standard. The doom of the bit-paired keyboard was the large-scale introduction of the computer terminal into the normal office environment, where out-and-out technophobes were expected to use the equipment. The "typewriter-paired" standard became universal, "bit-paired" hardware was quickly junked or relegated to dusty corners, and both terms passed into disuse.
  • black-billed cuckoo — a black-billed North American cuckoo, Coccyzus erythropthalmus, that, unlike most cuckoos, constructs its own nest and rears its own young.
  • black-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.
  • black-footed ferret — a musteline mammal, Mustela nigripes, of W North America, closely related to the weasels
  • black-tailed godwit — a large wading bird with a very long beak, Limosa limosa, found in W and Central Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australasia
  • blackfellow's bread — the edible portion of a species of pore fungus, Polyporus mylittae, that occurs in Australia.
  • blind carbon (copy) — a carbon copy of a letter sent to someone other than the addressee, with no indication on the original letter that such a copy has been sent
  • blood alcohol level — the amount of alcohol in someone's blood
  • blood pressure cuff — A blood pressure cuff is a medical device consisting of a piece of rubber or similar material that is wrapped around a patient's arm and then inflated in order to measure their blood pressure.
  • blood-brain barrier — the barrier created by the walls of the capillaries of the brain that prevents certain substances, as most proteins and drugs, from passing from the blood into the brain tissue and cerebrospinal fluid
  • bloodstock industry — the breeding and training of racehorses
  • bloody-nosed beetle — a beetle, Timarcha tenebricosa, that exudes bright red blood when alarmed: family Chrysomelidae
  • blow someone's mind — (of a drug, esp LSD) to alter someone's mental state
  • blue-breasted quail — a small, brightly colored quail, Coturnix chinensis, of southern Asia and Australia, widely kept as a cage bird.
  • blue-ringed octopus — a highly venomous octopus, Octopus maculosus, of E Australia which exhibits blue bands on its tentacles when disturbed
  • blue-tongued lizard — a large Australian lizard, Tiliqua scincoides, characterized by having a cobalt-blue tongue.
  • board certification — the process of certifying that a physician has passed an examination and met the standards of a professional organization representing a particular medical specialty.
  • board of trade unit — a unit of electrical energy equal to 1 kilowatt-hour
  • boat-tailed grackle — a large grackle, Quiscalus major, of the southeastern U.S., that folds its tail into a shape resembling the keel of a boat.
  • bode ill (or well) — to be a bad (or good) omen
  • bordering countries — countries that share a border with a particular country
  • born out of wedlock — born when one's parents are not legally married
  • bound hand and foot — with hands and feet tied
  • boundary commission — (in Britain) a body established by statute to undertake periodic reviews of the boundaries of parliamentary constituencies and to recommend changes to take account of population shifts
  • brand contamination — the process by which the reputation of a particular brand or product becomes tarnished by adverse publicity
  • british west indies — a former name for the states in the Caribbean that are members of the Commonwealth: the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts-Nevis, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; along with the islands which remain as United Kingdom dependencies: Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the British Virgin Islands
  • brokered convention — a party convention in which many delegates are pledged to favorite sons who use their blocs of votes to bargain with leading candidates who lack a majority of delegate support.
  • brush-tailed possum — any of several widely-distributed Australian possums of the genus Trichosurus
  • building contractor — an individual or company that contracts for the construction of houses, etc
  • buildings insurance — insurance which covers buildings
  • bulbourethral gland — Cowper's gland
  • butabarbital sodium — a barbiturate, C 10 H 15 N 2 NaO 3 , used as a sedative and hypnotic.
  • by leaps and bounds — with unexpectedly rapid progess
  • cable-stayed bridge — a type of suspension bridge in which the supporting cables are connected directly to the bridge deck without the use of suspenders
  • carbon dioxide snow — solid carbon dioxide, used as a refrigerant
  • cardbox for windows — (database)   A database handling program, especially useful for scholars and librarians.
  • cerebellar syndrome — a disease of the cerebellum characterized by unsteady movements and mispronunciation of words
  • cerebrospinal fluid — the clear colourless fluid in the spaces inside and around the spinal cord and brain
  • chamber of deputies — the lower house of the legislature of certain countries, as Italy.
  • chartered librarian — (in Britain) a librarian who has obtained a qualification from the Library Association in addition to a degree or diploma in librarianship
  • checks and balances — competition and mutual restraint among the various branches of government
  • chlorobromide paper — a relatively fast printing paper coated with an emulsion of silver chloride and silver bromide.
  • cobaltous hydroxide — a rose-red, amorphous, water-insoluble powder, Co 2 O 3 ⋅3H 2 O, used chiefly in the preparation of cobalt salts and in the manufacture of paint and varnish driers.
  • cobol-1961 extended — (language)   A short-lived separation of COBOL specifications.
  • cock and bull story — an absurd, improbable story presented as the truth: Don't ask him about his ancestry unless you want to hear a cock-and-bull story.
  • cock-and-bull story — If you describe something that someone tells you as a cock-and-bull story, you mean that you do not believe it is true.
  • common object model — Component Object Model
  • competitive bidding — a system by which a contract is awarded to the lowest bidder
  • convergent boundary — a major geologic discontinuity or suture marking the juncture of lithospheric plates that have been joined by plate tectonics.
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