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16-letter words containing b, e, t, l

  • bog whortleberry — a plant, Vaccinium uliginosum, of mountain regions, having pink flowers and black fruits
  • bomb calorimeter — a device for determining heats of combustion by igniting a sample in a high pressure of oxygen in a sealed vessel and measuring the resulting rise in temperature: used for measuring the calorific value of foods
  • bonneville flats — an area of salt flats in the W part of Great Salt Lake Desert, in NW Utah: site of automobile speed tests.
  • boolean-operator — any operation in which each of the operands and the result take one of two values.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • bouillotte table — a small round table of the 18th century, having around its top a gallery within which a bouchon could be set for the playing of card games.
  • bouquet larkspur — a plant, Delphinium grandiflorum, of eastern Asia, having blue or whitish flowers and hairy fruit.
  • bracknell forest — a unitary authority in SE England, in E Berkshire. Pop: 110 100 (2003 est). Area: 109 sq km (42 sq miles)
  • breakfast cereal — a type of food made from a cereal plant and commonly eaten at breakfast
  • bright and early — very early in the morning
  • bright-blindness — blindness occurring in sheep grazing pastures heavily infested with bracken
  • bring sb to heel — If you bring someone to heel, you force them to obey you.
  • bristlecone pine — a coniferous tree, Pinus aristata, of the western US, bearing cones with bristle-like prickles: one of the longest-lived trees, useful in radiocarbon dating
  • brittany spaniel — a short-tailed French bird dog that typically has a smooth orange- or liver-and-white coat
  • 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).
  • brothel-creepers — soft-soled men's shoes that were originally popular in the 1950s
  • buckwheat family — the plant family Polygonaceae, characterized by herbaceous plants, vines, shrubs, and trees having stems with swollen joints, simple leaves, small, petalless flowers, and fruit in the form of an achene, and including the buckwheat, dock, knotweed, rhubarb, sea grape, and smartweed.
  • 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.
  • bullet-resistant — not allowing bullets to pass through
  • bulletproof vest — a protective garment
  • bundled software — software sold as part of a package with computers or other hardware or software
  • bunker mentality — a defensive attitude in which others are seen as hostile or potentially hostile
  • bureaucratically — of, relating to, or characteristic of a bureaucrat or a bureaucracy; arbitrary and routine.
  • burgundy trefoil — alfalfa.
  • burn oneself out — to undergo rapid combustion or consume fuel in such a way as to give off heat, gases, and, usually, light; be on fire: The fire burned in the grate.
  • business analyst — (job)   A person who analyses the operations of a department or functional unit to develop a general systems solution to the problem. The solution will typically involve a combination of manual and automated processes. The business analyst can provide insights into an operation for an information systems analyst.
  • buttercup family — the plant family Ranunculaceae, typified by mostly herbaceous plants having usually alternate leaves, multistaminate flowers sometimes lacking petals but with colorful sepals, and including the anemone, buttercup, clematis, columbine, delphinium, and monkshood.
  • butterfly ballot — a ballot paper in the form of two leaves extending from a central spine
  • butterfly damper — a damper, as in a flue, that rotates about a central axis across its face.
  • butterfly effect — the idea, used in chaos theory, that a very small difference in the initial state of a physical system can make a significant difference to the state at some later time
  • butterfly flower — Also called Jerusalem date. a shrub or small tree, Bauhinia monandra, of French Guiana, having clusters of pink, purple-streaked flowers.
  • butterfly orchid — an orchid (Oncidium papilio) with reddish flowers, native to South America
  • butterfly scheme — A parallel version of Scheme for the BBN Butterfly computer.
  • butterfly stroke — a swimming stroke in which the arms are plunged forward together in large circular movements
  • button one's lip — to stop talking: often imperative
  • by the bucketful — If someone produces or gets something by the bucketful, they produce or get something in large quantities.
  • cabbage palmetto — a tropical American fan palm, Sabal palmetto, with edible leaf buds and leaves used in thatching
  • cabbage root fly — a dipterous fly, Erioischia brassicae, whose larvae feed on the roots and stems of cabbages and other brassicas: family Muscidae (houseflies, etc)
  • cable television — Cable television is a television system in which signals are sent along wires rather than by radio waves.
  • can-not help but — to give or provide what is necessary to accomplish a task or satisfy a need; contribute strength or means to; render assistance to; cooperate effectively with; aid; assist: He planned to help me with my work. Let me help you with those packages.
  • canterbury bells — a cultivated bellflower (Campanula medium) with white, pink, or blue cuplike flowers
  • canterbury tales — an unfinished literary work by Chaucer, largely in verse, consisting of stories told by pilgrims on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket at Canterbury
  • carboxylesterase — (enzyme) Any enzyme that catalyses the hydrolysis of a carboxylic ester.
  • castellated beam — a rolled metal beam the web of which is first divided by a lengthwise zigzag cut, then welded together so as to join the peaks of both halves, thus increasing its depth and strength.
  • celebrity status — the prominence of film star, footballer, musician etc who is constantly photographed and written about in tabloids and magazines
  • cerebellopontine — (anatomy) Relating to the cerebellum and pons.
  • chargeable asset — any asset that can give rise to assessment for capital gains tax on its disposal. Exempt assets include principal private residences, cars, investments held in a personal equity plan, and government securities
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