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14-letter words containing b

  • bishop's mitre — a European heteropterous bug, Aelia acuminata, whose larvae are a pest of cereal grasses: family Pentatomidae
  • bishops' bible — an English translation of the Bible made under the direction of Matthew Parker and published in 1568: the recognized translation of the Bible in England until the Authorized (King James) Version of 1611.
  • bisphosphonate — any drug of a class that inhibits the resorption of bone; used in treating certain bone disorders, esp osteoporosis
  • bit error rate — A bit error rate is the measure of the number of incorrect bits that can be expected in a specified number of bits in a serial stream.
  • 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 blue — discolored, as by bruising; exhibiting ecchymosis: a black-and-blue mark on my knee.
  • 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 bindweed — a twining polygonaceous European plant, Polygonum convolvulus, with heart-shaped leaves and triangular black seed pods
  • black blizzard — a dust storm.
  • black bullhead — a common freshwater catfish, Ictalurus melas, of North America, considered by some to be a food delicacy.
  • black diamonds — carbonado1 .
  • black hawk war — a war fought in northern Illinois and present-day southern Wisconsin, 1831–32, in which U.S. regulars and militia with Indian allies defeated the Sauk and Fox Indians, led by Chief Black Hawk, attempting to recover lost hunting grounds.
  • black mulberry — a small deciduous tree, Morus nigra, with small leaves, producing edible fruit
  • 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
  • black root rot — any of several diseases of plants characterized by black or brown lesions on the root.
  • black sea bass — an American coastal percoid fish, Centropristes striatus, having an elongated body with a long spiny dorsal fin almost divided into two
  • black selenium — an allotropic form of selenium occurring as a black, amorphous, water-insoluble, light-sensitive powder: used chiefly in photoelectric cells.
  • black skipjack — a small spotted tuna, Euthynnus yaito, of Indo-Pacific seas
  • black squirrel — a fox squirrel or gray squirrel in that color phase in which the fur is black.
  • black-and-blue — (of the skin) discoloured, as from a bruise
  • black-eyed pea — Black-eyed peas are beige seeds with black marks that are eaten as a vegetable. They are from a plant called the cowpea.
  • black-on-black — concerning black people exclusively
  • 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.
  • bladder cancer — any cancer of the bladder
  • bladder ketmia — plant with pale yellow flowers
  • bladder ketmie — flower-of-an-hour
  • blade-shearing — the shearing of sheep using hand shears
  • blah-blah-blah — and so on; and so forth.
  • blanco-fombona — Rufino [roo-fee-naw] /ruˈfi nɔ/ (Show IPA), 1874–1944, Venezuelan author.
  • 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-flower — any composite plant of the genus Gaillardia, having showy heads of yellow or red flowers.
  • 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.
  • blankety-blank — damned
  • blantyre-limbe — a city in S Malawi: largest city in the country; formed in 1956 from the adjoining towns of Blantyre and Limbe. Pop: 647 000 (2005 est)
  • blaxploitation — a genre of films featuring Black stereotypes
  • bleat on about — If you say that someone is bleating on about something, you mean that they are talking about it a great deal in a way which makes them sound weak and irritating.
  • bleeding heart — If you describe someone as a bleeding heart, you are criticizing them for being sympathetic towards people who are poor and suffering, without doing anything practical to help.
  • blended family — a social unit consisting of two previously married parents and the children of their former marriages
  • blepharoplasty — cosmetic surgery performed on the eyelid
  • blessed virgin — the Virgin Mary
  • bletchley park — the Buckinghamshire estate which was the centre of British code-breaking operations during World War II
  • bletheranskate — a blatherer
  • blind as a bat — having extremely poor eyesight
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