15-letter words containing b, e, c, k
- parachute brake — a parachute opened horizontally from the tail of an airplane upon landing, used as an aid in braking. Also called parabrake. Compare drogue parachute (def 2).
- pat on the back — to strike lightly or gently with something flat, as with a paddle or the palm of the hand, usually in order to flatten, smooth, or shape: to pat dough into flat pastry forms.
- pick up the tab — If you pick up the tab, you pay a bill on behalf of a group of people or provide the money that is needed for something.
- pickaback plane — a powered airplane designed to be carried aloft by another airplane and released in flight.
- pitch blackness — extreme darkness; lack of light
- public speaking — the act of delivering speeches in public.
- quadruple bucky — Obsolete. 1. On an MIT space-cadet keyboard, use of all four of the shifting keys (control, meta, hyper, and super) while typing a character key. 2. On a Stanford or MIT keyboard in raw mode, use of four shift keys while typing a fifth character, where the four shift keys are the control and meta keys on *both* sides of the keyboard. This was very difficult to do! One accepted technique was to press the left-control and left-meta keys with your left hand, the right-control and right-meta keys with your right hand, and the fifth key with your nose. Quadruple-bucky combinations were very seldom used in practice, because when one invented a new command one usually assigned it to some character that was easier to type. If you want to imply that a program has ridiculously many commands or features, you can say something like: "Oh, the command that makes it spin the tapes while whistling Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is quadruple-bucky-cokebottle." See double bucky, bucky bits, cokebottle.
- record-breaking — top, most successful
- red-back spider — a venomous spider, Latrodectus hasselti, of Australia and New Zealand, related to the black widow spider and having a bright red stripe on the back.
- rockwell number — a numerical expression of the hardness of a metal as determined by a test (Rockwell test) made by indenting a test piece with a Brale, or with a steel ball of specific diameter, under two successive loads and measuring the resulting permanent indentation.
- runabout ticket — a rail ticket that allows unlimited travel within a specified area for a limited period of time (for example one day, a weekend, three days, etc)
- sand-lime brick — a hard brick composed of silica sand and a lime of high calcium content, molded under high pressure and baked.
- see the back of — to be rid of
- skimble-scamble — rambling; confused; nonsensical: a skimble-scamble explanation.
- spiny cocklebur — a cocklebur, Xanthium spinosum, introduced into North America from Europe.
- straight-backed — having a straight, usually high, back: a straight-backed chair.
- the black death — a form of bubonic plague pandemic in Europe and Asia during the 14th century, when it killed over 50 million people
- the black ferns — the women's international Rugby Union football team of New Zealand
- the black stump — an imaginary marker of the extent of civilization (esp in the phrase beyond the black stump)
- the black watch — (formerly) the Royal Highland Regiment in the British Army; (since 2006) an infantry battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland
- the tall blacks — the international basketball team of New Zealand
- the-sketch-book — a collection of essays and stories (1819–20) by Washington Irving.
- thomas a becket — Saint Thomas à, 1118?–70, archbishop of Canterbury: murdered because of his opposition to Henry II's policies toward the church.
- tidal benchmark — a benchmark used as a reference for tidal observations.
- trade paperback — a paperback book of a size similar to a typical hard-cover book, intended for sale in bookstores as distinguished from a cheaper and smaller paperback intended for sale on racks at drugstores, newsstands, etc.
- traveling block — (in a hoisting tackle) the block hooked to and moving with the load.
- wring sb's neck — If you say that you will wring someone's neck or that you would like to wring their neck, you mean that you are very angry or irritated with them.