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14-letter words containing b, s, t

  • big brotherism — paternalistic authoritarianism that seeks to supply the needs and regulate the conduct of people.
  • big house, the — a penitentiary
  • big red switch — (jargon)   (BRS) IBM jargon for the power switch on a computer, especially the "Emergency Pull" switch on an IBM mainframe or the power switch on an IBM PC where it really is large and red. "This [email protected]%$% bitty box is hung again; time to hit the Big Red Switch." It is alleged that the emergency pull switch on an IBM 360/91 actually fired a non-conducting bolt into the main power feed; the BRSes on more recent mainframes physically drop a block into place so that they can't be pushed back in. People get fired for pulling them, especially inappropriately (see also molly-guard). Compare power cycle, three-finger salute, 120 reset; see also scram switch.
  • bikini bottoms — the part of a bikini worn over the groin
  • bilious attack — a group of symptoms consisting of headache, abdominal pain, and constipation
  • bill of rights — A Bill of Rights is a written list of citizens' rights which is usually part of the constitution of a country.
  • billy no-mates — a person with no friends
  • binding strake — a very strong, heavy strake of planking, especially one next to a sheer strake.
  • bioaeronautics — the use of aircraft in the discovery, development, and protection of natural and biological resources
  • biocybernetics — the branch of cybernetics that deals with the control and communication systems of living organisms
  • bioelectronics — a branch of electronics that deals with electronic devices, implants, etc. used in medicine and biological research
  • bioinformatics — the branch of information science concerned with large databases of biochemical or pharmaceutical information
  • biolinguistics — the study of language functions as they relate to or derive from the biological characteristics of an organism.
  • bioluminescent — the production of light by living organisms.
  • biomathematics — the study of the application of mathematics to biology
  • biometric risk — Biometric risk covers all risks related to human life conditions, such as death, birth, disability, age, and number of children.
  • bioprospecting — searching for plant or animal species for use as a source of commercially exploitable products, such as medicinal drugs
  • bioregionalist — someone who believes in bioregionalism
  • biostatistical — relating to biostatistics
  • biosystematics — the study of the variation and evolution of a population of organisms in relation to their taxonomic classification
  • biosystematist — someone who studies or works professionally in the field of biosystematics
  • bipartisanship — representing, characterized by, or including members from two parties or factions: Government leaders hope to achieve a bipartisan foreign policy.
  • bipolarisation — the act of bipolarising
  • bird sanctuary — an area of land in which birds are protected and encouraged to breed
  • birthing stool — a stool constructed to allow a woman in labour to give birth in a sitting position
  • biscuit barrel — an airtight container of circular section equipped with a lid and used for storing biscuits
  • biscuit-firing — the first firing given to pottery, before it is glazed
  • bishop's mitre — a European heteropterous bug, Aelia acuminata, whose larvae are a pest of cereal grasses: family Pentatomidae
  • bisphosphonate — any drug of a class that inhibits the resorption of bone; used in treating certain bone disorders, esp osteoporosis
  • bite one's lip — If you bite your lip or your tongue, you stop yourself from saying something that you want to say, because it would be the wrong thing to say in the circumstances.
  • bitmap display — (hardware)   A computer output device where each pixel displayed on the monitor screen corresponds directly to one or more bits in the computer's video memory. Such a display can be updated extremely rapidly since changing a pixel involves only a single processor write to memory compared with a terminal or VDU connected via a serial line where the speed of the serial line limits the speed at which the display can be changed. Most modern personal computers and workstations have bitmap displays, allowing the efficient use of graphical user interfaces, interactive graphics and a choice of on-screen fonts. Some more expensive systems still delegate graphics operations to dedicated hardware such as graphics accelerators. The bitmap display might be traced back to the earliest days of computing when the Manchester University Mark I(?) computer, developed by F.C. Williams and T. Kilburn shortly after the Second World War. This used a storage tube as its working memory. Phosphor dots were used to store single bits of data which could be read by the user and interpreted as binary numbers.
  • bits per pixel — (hardware, graphics)   (bpp) The number of bits of information stored per pixel of an image or displayed by a graphics adapter. The more bits there are, the more colours can be represented, but the more memory is required to store or display the image. A colour can be described by the intensities of red, green and blue (RGB) components. Allowing 8 bits (1 byte) per component (24 bits per pixel) gives 256 levels for each component and over 16 million different colours - more than the human eye can distinguish. Microsoft Windows [and others?] calls this truecolour. An image of 1024x768 with 24 bpp requires over 2 MB of memory. "High colour" uses 16 bpp (or 15 bpp), 5 bits for blue, 5 bits for red and 6 bits for green. This reduced colour precision gives a slight loss of image quality at a 1/3 saving on memory. Standard VGA uses a palette of 16 colours (4 bpp), each colour in the palette is 24 bit. Standard SVGA uses a palette of 256 colours (8 bpp). Some graphics hardware and software support 32-bit colour depths, including an 8-bit "alpha channel" for transparency effects.
  • bitter cassava — a species of cassava (Manihot esculenta) whose poisonous roots when processed yield tapioca starch
  • black and tans — Usually, Black and Tans. an armed force of about 6000 soldiers sent by the British government to Ireland in June, 1920, to suppress revolutionary activity: so called from the colors of their uniform.
  • black as night — totally dark
  • black basaltes — basaltware.
  • black panthers — (in the US) a militant Black political party founded in 1965 to end the political dominance of White people
  • black redstart — a small, Passerine bird, Phoenicurus ochruros, found in Central and S Europe
  • blacktip shark — a widely distributed sand shark, Charcharinus limbatus, having fins that appear to have been dipped in ink, inhabiting shallow waters of warm seas.
  • blanket finish — a finish so close that a blanket would cover all the contestants involved
  • blanket stitch — a strong reinforcing stitch for the edges of blankets and other thick material
  • blanket-stitch — a basic sewing stitch in which widely spaced, interlocking loops, or purls, are formed, used for cutwork, as a decorative finish for edges, etc.
  • blepharoplasty — cosmetic surgery performed on the eyelid
  • bletheranskate — a blatherer
  • blind as a bat — having extremely poor eyesight
  • blind register — (in the United Kingdom) a list of those who are blind and are therefore entitled to financial and other benefits
  • blind staggers — the staggers
  • blind stamping — an impression on a book cover without using colour or gold leaf
  • blister beetle — any beetle of the family Meloidae, many of which produce a secretion that blisters the skin
  • blister copper — an impure form of copper having a blister-like surface due to the release of gas during cooling
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