16-letter words containing b, e, t, d
- billy goat beard — a man's beard that is long under the chin and shaved elsewhere
- biodegradability — capable of decaying through the action of living organisms: biodegradable paper; biodegradable detergent.
- biodeterioration — biodegradation.
- biometric device — biometrics
- bird in the hand — any warm-blooded vertebrate of the class Aves, having a body covered with feathers, forelimbs modified into wings, scaly legs, a beak, and no teeth, and bearing young in a hard-shelled egg.
- bird's-nest fern — a tropical fern, Asplenium nidus, having fronds arranged in clumps resembling a bird's nest.
- bird's-nest soup — a rich spicy Chinese soup made from the outer part of the nests of SE Asian swifts of the genus Collocalia
- birthday present — a gift given to someone on their birthday
- bit-mapped image — a computer image that is held in memory as a series of colored dots in a grid, each dot represented by one or more bits.
- black nightshade — a poisonous solanaceous plant, Solanum nigrum, a common weed in cultivated land, having small white flowers with backward-curved petals and black berry-like fruits
- black-letter day — an unlucky or tragic day.
- blacktailed deer — a mule deer, esp. the subspecies (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) found from N Calif. to British Columbia
- bleeder resistor — a resistor connected across the output terminals of a power supply in order to improve voltage regulation and to discharge filter capacitors
- block and tackle — a hoisting device in which a rope or chain is passed around a pair of blocks containing one or more pulleys. The upper block is secured overhead and the lower block supports the load, the effort being applied to the free end of the rope or chain
- block-structured — (language) Any programming language in which sections of source code contained within pairs of matching delimiters such as "" and "" (e.g. in C) or "begin" and "end" (e.g. Algol) are executed as a single unit. A block of code may be the body of a subroutine or function, or it may be controlled by conditional execution (if statement) or repeated execution (while statement, for statement, etc.). In all but the most primitive block structured languages a variable's scope can be limited to the block in which it is declared. Block-structured languages support structured programming where each block can be written without detailed knowledge of the inner workings of other blocks, thus allowing a top-down design approach. See also abstract data type, module.
- blood substitute — a substance such as plasma, albumin, or dextran, used to replace lost blood or increase the blood volume
- blow the lid off — a removable or hinged cover for closing the opening, usually at the top, of a pot, jar, trunk, etc.; a movable cover.
- blue-winged teal — a small North American duck (Anas discors) found on ponds and rivers
- board and batten — a siding consisting of wide boards or of sheets of plywood set vertically with butt joints covered by battens.
- book of the dead — in ancient Egypt, a book of prayers and charms meant to help the soul in the afterworld
- bootstrap loader — (operating system) A short program loaded from non-volatile storage and used to bootstrap a computer. On early computers great efforts were expended on making the bootstrap loader short, in order to make it easy to toggle in via the front panel switches. It was just clever enough to read in a slightly more complex program (usually from punched cards or paper tape), to which it handed control. This program in turn read the application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk drive. Thus, in successive steps, the computer "pulled itself up by its bootstraps" to a useful operating state. Nowadays the bootstrap loader is usually found in ROM or EPROM, and reads the first stage in from a fixed location on the disk, called the "boot block". When this program gains control, it is powerful enough to load the actual OS and hand control over to it. A diskless workstation can use bootp to load its OS from the network.
- bordeaux mixture — a fungicide consisting of a solution of equal quantities of copper sulphate and quicklime
- border leicester — a breed of sheep originally developed in the border country between Scotland and England by crossing English Leicesters with Cheviots: large numbers in Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand. It has a long white fleece with no wool on the head
- botanical garden — a place where collections of plants and trees are kept for scientific study and exhibition
- boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
- braking distance — the distance a vehicle travels from the point at which its brakes are applied to the point at which it comes to a stop
- brand acceptance — the extent to which consumers recognize and welcome a brand
- brandenburg gate — the only remaining city gate in Berlin, built by Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia in 1788–1791 as a symbol of peace and now one of the city's landmarks
- brave west winds — the strong west and west-northwest winds blowing between latitudes 40° S and 60° S.
- bread and butter — Something that is the bread and butter of a person or organization is the activity or work that provides the main part of their income.
- bread-and-butter — providing a livelihood or basic source of income; supplying the basic needs of life: a bread-and-butter job; the agency's bread-and-butter account.
- break the record — surpass previous highest, best
- bred-in-the-bone — firmly instilled or established as if by heredity: the bred-in-the-bone integrity of the school's headmaster.
- bridge rectifier — a full-wave rectifier consisting of a bridge with a similar rectifier in each of the four arms
- bright and early — very early in the morning
- bright's disease — chronic inflammation of the kidneys; chronic nephritis
- bright-blindness — blindness occurring in sheep grazing pastures heavily infested with bracken
- brittle diabetes — uncontrolled insulin disorder
- broadloom carpet — any carpet woven on a wide loom and not having seams, especially one wider than 54 inches (137 cm).
- building society — In Britain, a building society is a business which will lend you money when you want to buy a house. You can also invest money in a building society, where it will earn interest. Compare savings and loan association.
- bundled software — software sold as part of a package with computers or other hardware or software
- burgundy trefoil — alfalfa.
- bury st. edmunds — a city in W Suffolk, in E England: medieval shrine.
- business studies — an academic subject that embraces areas such as accounting, marketing and economics
- butenedioic acid — either of two geometrical isomers with the formula HOOCCH:CHCOOH
- butterfly damper — a damper, as in a flue, that rotates about a central axis across its face.
- butterfly orchid — an orchid (Oncidium papilio) with reddish flowers, native to South America
- caducibranchiate — (of many amphibians, such as frogs) having gills during one stage of the life cycle only
- camborne-redruth — a former (until 1974) urban district in SW England, in Cornwall: formed in 1934 by the amalgamation of the neighbouring towns of Camborne and Redruth. Pop: 39 936 (2001)
- captive breeding — Captive breeding is the breeding of wild animals in places such as zoos, especially animals which have become rare in the wild.