20-letter words containing b, u, s
- sodium metabisulfite — Sodium metabisulfite is a crystalline compound used as an antioxidant.
- soke of peterborough — a former administrative unit of E central England, generally considered part of Northamptonshire or Huntingdonshire: absorbed into Cambridgeshire in 1974
- 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.
- standard book number — International Standard Book Number. Abbreviation: SBN.
- ste. anne de beaupre — a village in S Quebec, in SE Canada, on the St. Lawrence, NE of Quebec: Roman Catholic shrine.
- straight-cut tobacco — tobacco that is cut in such a way that it will lie flat.
- subjective idea-list — a doctrine that the world has no existence independent of sensations or ideas.
- subjective intension — the associations that an expression has for an individual; the intension he believes it to have
- subpoena duces tecum — a writ directing a person to appear in court and to bring some document described in the writ.
- subscription edition — an edition of one or more volumes for which a number of prospective purchasers place orders, usually in advance of publication.
- subscription library — a commercial lending library
- telephone subscriber — a person who subscribes to a telephone service
- the canterbury tales — an uncompleted sequence of tales by Chaucer, written for the most part after 1387.
- 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 push the boat out — If you push the boat out, you spend a lot of money on something, especially in order to celebrate.
- to put it to sb that — If you put it to someone that something is true, you suggest that it is true, especially when you think that they will be unwilling to admit this.
- to waste your breath — If someone says you are wasting your breath, they mean that the person you are talking to will not take any notice and so there is no point saying anything to them.
- tobacco mosaic virus — a retrovirus causing mosaic disease in members of the nightshade family. Abbreviation: TMV.
- tomb of the unknowns — See under Unknown Soldier.
- toothbrush moustache — a short narrow moustache, resembling the filaments of a toothbrush
- 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.
- twiddle one's thumbs — to turn about or play with lightly or idly, especially with the fingers; twirl.
- under/below strength — If an army or team is under strength or below strength, it does not have all the members that it needs or usually has.
- 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
- 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.
- white bush (scallop) — a variety of summer squash having a saucer-shaped white fruit, scalloped around the edges
- wilson cloud chamber — cloud chamber.