16-letter words containing d, a, i
- avian diphtheria — a virus disease of chickens and other birds characterized by warty excrescences on the comb and wattles, and often by diphtherialike changes in the mucous membranes of the head.
- azodicarbonamide — (chemistry) An organic chemical, a yellow to orange red, odorless, crystalline powder, used in food industry as a food additive, a flour bleaching agent and improving agent and in foaming plastics.
- babe-in-a-cradle — a tall orchid, Epiblema grandiflorum, of SW Australia with lilac to mauve flowers
- back-seat driver — If you refer to a passenger in a car as a back-seat driver, they annoy you because they constantly give you advice.
- background music — music of any kind that is played while some other activity is going on, so that people do not actively attend to it
- background noise — any type of noise that is not the sound that you are specifically listening to or monitoring
- backward-looking — If you describe someone or something as backward-looking, you disapprove of their attitudes, ideas, or actions because they are based on old-fashioned opinions or methods.
- badminton racket — the type of racket used in games of badminton
- baggage handling — the work of dealing with and sorting passengers' baggage at an airport
- bahasa indonesia — the official language of Indonesia: developed from the form of Malay formerly widely used as a trade language in SE Asia
- balearic islands — a group of islands in the W Mediterranean, consisting of Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza, Formentera, Cabrera, and 11 islets: a province of Spain. Capital: Palma, on Majorca. Pop: 1 071 500 (2003 est). Area: 5012 sq km (1935 sq miles)
- ballroom dancing — Ballroom dancing is a type of dancing in which a man and a woman dance together using fixed sequences of steps and movements.
- band-pass filter — a filter that transmits only those currents having a frequency lying within specified limits
- barbed tributary — a tributary that joins its mainstream in an upstream direction rather than in the more common downstream direction.
- barium hydroxide — a white poisonous crystalline solid, used in the manufacture of organic compounds and in the preparation of beet sugar. Formula: Ba(OH)2
- baron tweedsmuir — the title of Scottish novelist John Buchan
- barrier of ideas — the representations of objects which certain accounts of perception interpose between the objects themselves and our awareness of them, so that, as critics argue, we can never know whether there is in reality anything which resembles our perceptions
- bartholomeu dias — Bartholomeu [bahr-too-loo-me-oo] /ˌbɑr tʊ lʊˈmɛ ʊ/ (Show IPA), c1450–1500, Portuguese navigator: discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope.
- basic dichromate — an orange-red, amorphous, water-insoluble powder, Bi 2 O 3 ⋅2CrO 3 , used chiefly as a pigment in paints.
- bastard culverin — a 16th-century cannon, smaller than a culverin, firing a shot of between 5 and 8 pounds (11 and 17.6 kg).
- bastard pointing — an imitation of tuck pointing, having a fillet made from the mortar of the joint.
- batch production — production of goods in batches, rather than continuously
- bearing pedestal — an independent support for a bearing, usually incorporating a bearing housing
- bearish tendency — a tendency for share prices to fall
- belgian sheepdog — any of a Belgian breed of large herding dog with a black coat, sometimes used as a guide dog
- bells of ireland — an annual garden plant, Moluccella laevis, whose flowers have a green cup-shaped calyx: family Lamiaceae (labiates)
- belted-bias tire — a motor-vehicle tire of the same construction as a bias-ply tire but with an added belt of steel or a strong synthetic material under the tread.
- bermuda triangle — an area in the Atlantic Ocean bounded by Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Florida where ships and aeroplanes are alleged to have disappeared mysteriously
- bias-belted tire — belted-bias tire.
- bidirectionality — capable of reacting or functioning in two, usually opposite, directions.
- bihar and orissa — a former province of NE India: now divided into the states of Bihar and Odisha (formerly Orissa).
- billy goat beard — a man's beard that is long under the chin and shaved elsewhere
- biodegradability — capable of decaying through the action of living organisms: biodegradable paper; biodegradable detergent.
- biodeterioration — biodegradation.
- biological child — any child conceived rather than adopted by a specified parent, and therefore carrying genes from the parent.
- bipolar disorder — Bipolar disorder is a mental illness in which a person's state of mind changes between extreme happiness and extreme depression.
- bird in the hand — any warm-blooded vertebrate of the class Aves, having a body covered with feathers, forelimbs modified into wings, scaly legs, a beak, and no teeth, and bearing young in a hard-shelled egg.
- bird of paradise — A bird of paradise is a songbird which is found mainly in New Guinea. The male birds have very brightly coloured feathers.
- bird's-eye maple — a cut of sugar maple wood used especially for veneers, having a wavy grain with many dark, circular markings.
- bird-of-paradise — Also called bird-of-paradise flower. any of several plants of the genus Strelitzia, native to southern Africa, especially S. reginae, having a large, showy orange and blue inflorescence.
- birthday honours — (in Britain) honorary titles conferred on the official birthday of the sovereign
- birthday present — a gift given to someone on their birthday
- bit-mapped image — a computer image that is held in memory as a series of colored dots in a grid, each dot represented by one or more bits.
- black nightshade — a poisonous solanaceous plant, Solanum nigrum, a common weed in cultivated land, having small white flowers with backward-curved petals and black berry-like fruits
- blacktailed deer — a mule deer, esp. the subspecies (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) found from N Calif. to British Columbia
- bleaching powder — a white powder with the odour of chlorine, consisting of chlorinated calcium hydroxide with an approximate formula CaCl(OCl).4H2O. It is used in solution as a bleaching agent and disinfectant
- blended learning — the use of both classroom teaching and on-line learning
- blind man's buff — a game in which a blindfolded person tries to catch and identify the other players
- blind man's rule — a carpenter's rule having large numbers to permit its reading in dim light.
- blind salamander — any of several North American salamanders, especially of the genera Typhlotriton, Typhlomolge, and Haideotriton, that inhabit underground streams or deep wells and have undeveloped eyes and scant pigmentation.