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15-letter words containing b, r, i, s

  • be spoiling for — to have an aggressive desire for (a fight, etc)
  • bear comparison — to be sufficiently similar in class or range to be compared with (something else), esp favourably
  • béarnaise sauce — a creamy sauce, esp. for meat or fish, made of butter and egg yolks and flavored with wine, vinegar, shallots, and herbs
  • bedford heights — a town in N Ohio.
  • bedroom slipper — a soft shoe worn in the house
  • beginner's luck — the initial good fortune or success commonly supposed to come to a person who has recently taken up a new pursuit, as a sport or game: Catching a large trout the first time you go fishing is simply beginner's luck.
  • belief revision — (artificial intelligence)   The area of theory change in which preservation of the information in the theory to be changed plays a key role. A fundamental issue in belief revision is how to decide what information to retract in order to maintain consistency, when the addition of a new belief to a theory would make it inconsistent. Usually, an ordering on the sentences of the theory is used to determine priorities among sentences, so that those with lower priority can be retracted. This ordering can be difficult to generate and maintain. The postulates of the AGM Theory for Belief Revision describe minimal properties a revision process should have.
  • berenice's hair — the constellation Coma Berenices
  • bergius process — a method of hydrogenation formerly used with coal to produce an oil similar to petroleum.
  • berkshire hills — region of wooded hills in W Mass.: resort area
  • beside the mark — not striking the point aimed at
  • beta conversion — (theory)   A term from lambda-calculus for beta reduction or beta abstraction.
  • beurre noisette — a sauce of butter cooked until golden or nut brown, sometimes flavored with capers, vinegar, herbs, etc.
  • bias (ply) tire — a motor vehicle tire having a foundation of plies of rubberized cords in a crisscross pattern of lines diagonal to the center line of the tread
  • big sandy creek — a river in central Colorado, flowing NE and SE to the Arkansas River near Lamar: site of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre. 200 miles (322 km) long.
  • binomial series — an infinite series obtained by expanding a binomial raised to a power that is not a positive integer.
  • bioastronautics — the study of the effects of space flight on living organisms
  • biodestructible — biodegradable
  • biogeochemistry — the science of biological, chemical, and geological aspects of the environment
  • biostratigraphy — the examination of the ages of rock strata by using fossils
  • biot-savart law — the law that the magnetic induction near a long, straight conductor, as wire, varies inversely as the distance from the conductor and directly as the intensity of the current in the conductor.
  • bird of passage — If you refer to someone as a bird of passage, you mean that they are staying in a place for a short time before going to another place.
  • bird's eye view — You say that you have a bird's eye view of a place when you are looking down at it from a great height, so that you can see a long way but everything looks very small.
  • biscuit tortoni — an individual portion of tortoni, frozen and served in a small cup, often topped with ground almonds.
  • bits per second — (communications, unit)   (bps, b/s) The unit in which data rate is measured. For example, a modem's data rate is usually measured in kilobits per second. In 1996, the maximum modem speed for use on the PSTN was 33.6 kbps, rising to 56 kbps in 1997. Note that kilo- (k), mega- (M), etc. in data rates denote powers of 1000, not 1024.
  • bittersweetness — the quality of being bittersweet
  • blasting powder — a form of gunpowder made with sodium nitrate instead of saltpeter, used chiefly for blasting rock, ore, etc.
  • blessed trinity — Trinity (def 1).
  • boa constrictor — A boa constrictor is a large snake that kills animals by wrapping itself round their bodies and squeezing them to death. Boa constrictors are found mainly in South and Central America and the West Indies.
  • boarding school — A boarding school is a school which some or all of the pupils live in during the school term. Compare day school.
  • bohemian forest — a mountain range between the SW Czech Republic and SE Germany. Highest peak: Arber, 1457 m (4780 ft)
  • boiled dressing — a cooked salad dressing thickened with egg yolks and often containing mustard.
  • booster cushion — an extra seat or cushion placed on an existing seat for a child to sit on in a car
  • borderline case — a person or thing that is not clearly classifiable as something
  • borough-english — (until 1925) a custom in certain English boroughs whereby the youngest son inherited land to the exclusion of his older brothers
  • borscht circuit — summer resort hotels in the Catskills and White Mountains, where entertainment is provided for the guests
  • boston marriage — (especially in 19th-century New England) an intimate friendship between two women often maintaining a household together.
  • bourbon biscuit — a rich chocolate-flavoured biscuit with a chocolate-cream filling
  • boustrophedonic — of or relating to lines written in opposite directions
  • bowstring truss — a structural truss consisting of a curved top chord meeting a bottom chord at each end.
  • brachial plexus — a network of nerves in the armpits and neck, innervating the shoulders, arms, and hands.
  • brachistochrone — the curve between two points through which a body moves under the force of gravity in a shorter time than for any other curve; the path of quickest descent
  • brackett series — a series of lines in the infrared spectrum of hydrogen.
  • bragging rights — notional privileges that are gained by defeating a close rival
  • braille display — (hardware)   (Or "refreshable braille display", "refreshable display") An electromechanical device that renders braille with tiny, independently controlled pins used to represent the state of dots in braille cells. Each pin, in its "on" state, raises above the top of its hole in the screen; in its "off" state, it drops below the top of its hole. Older systems used tiny solenoids to control the state of the pins; modern systems are piezoelectric. Typical dimensions of a braille display are 1 line of 40 cells, each cell of two-by-eight dots.
  • branching rules — rules that are used to break down a complex problem into several smaller problems
  • branchiostegous — branchiostegal.
  • brand extension — the practice of using a well-known brand name to promote new products or services in unrelated fields
  • bravais lattice — any of 14 possible space lattices found in crystals
  • breaking strain — the amount of strain that, if applied to a particular material, will cause it to break
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