20-letter words containing b, r, i, e, u
- rub sb's nose in sth — To rub someone's nose in something that they do not want to think about, such as a failing or a mistake they have made, means to remind them repeatedly about it.
- ruby-crowned kinglet — an olive-gray, American kinglet, Regulus calendula, the male of which has an erectile, ruby crest.
- sb's future lies swh — If you say that someone's future lies in a particular place or activity, you think they will be most successful or happy in that place or doing that activity.
- semiautobiographical — pertaining to or being a fictionalized account of an author's own life.
- shibah asar betammuz — Shivah Asar Betammuz.
- shivah asar betammuz — a Jewish fast day observed on the 17th day of Tammuz in memory of the breach of the walls of Jerusalem by the Romans in a.d. 70.
- spontaneous abortion — miscarriage (def 1).
- spontaneous-abortion — Also called voluntary abortion. the removal of an embryo or fetus from the uterus in order to end a pregnancy.
- subscription edition — an edition of one or more volumes for which a number of prospective purchasers place orders, usually in advance of publication.
- telephone subscriber — a person who subscribes to a telephone service
- therapeutic abortion — abortion performed when a woman's pregnancy endangers her health.
- to be on dinner duty — to be responsible for preparing an evening meal
- to bring up the rear — If a person or vehicle is bringing up the rear, they are the last person or vehicle in a moving line of them.
- to burst into flames — If something bursts into flames or bursts into flame, it suddenly starts burning strongly.
- to cross the rubicon — If you say that someone has crossed the Rubicon, you mean that they have reached a point where they cannot change a decision or course of action.
- to disturb the peace — If someone is accused of disturbing the peace, they are accused of behaving in a noisy and offensive way in public.
- to get your bearings — to find out where one is or to find out what one should do next
- to give sb their due — You can say 'to give him his due', or 'giving him his due' when you are admitting that there are some good things about someone, even though there are things that you do not like about them.
- to tighten your belt — If you have to tighten your belt, you have to spend less money and manage without things because you have less money than you used to have.
- travelling-wave tube — an electronic tube in which an electron beam interacts with a distributed high-frequency magnetic field so that energy is transferred from the beam to the field
- tropical disturbance — a very weak, or incipient, tropical cyclone.
- trustee savings bank — a British financial institution which offered savings facilities for small investors and was managed by unpaid trustees. Depositors had no voting rights and no say in financial or managerial matters. The bank is now a public limited company with the same rights and services as other banks and only retains the title in the abbreviated form TSB.
- tubing head pressure — The tubing head pressure is the pressure on the tubing, which is measured at the wellhead.
- undistributed middle — Logic. a middle term of a syllogism that does not refer to its entire class in the major premise or minor premise, with the result that the syllogism is not valid.
- united arab emirates — group of Arabian states
- united arab republic — a name given the union of Egypt and Syria from 1958 to 1961; after that, the official name of Egypt alone until 1971. Abbreviation: U.A.R.
- universal serial bus — (hardware, standard) (USB) An external peripheral interface standard for communication between a computer and external peripherals over an inexpensive cable using biserial transmission. USB is intended to replace existing serial ports, parallel ports, keyboard, and monitor connectors and be used with keyboards, mice, monitors, printers, and possibly some low-speed scanners and removable hard drives. For faster devices existing IDE, SCSI, or emerging FC-AL or FireWire interfaces can be used. USB works at 12 Mbps with specific consideration for low cost peripherals. It supports up to 127 devices and both isochronous and asynchronous data transfers. Cables can be up to five metres long and it includes built-in power distribution for low power devices. It supports daisy chaining through a tiered star multidrop topology. A USB cable has a rectangular "Type A" plug at the computer end and a square "Type B" plug at the peripheral end. Before March 1996 Intel started to integrate the necessary logic into PC chip sets and encourage other manufacturers to do likewise. It was widely available by 1997. Later versions of Windows 95 included support for it. It was standard on Macintosh computers in 1999. The USB 2.0 specification was released in 2000 to allow USB to compete with Firewire etc. USB 2.0 is backward compatible with USB 1.1 but works at 480 Mbps.
- upper income bracket — a grouping of the highest earning tax payers
- wardrobe malfunction — an embarrassing situation caused by the clothes a person is wearing
- wilson cloud chamber — cloud chamber.