13-letter words containing d, e, b, a
- baking powder — Baking powder is an ingredient used in cake making. It causes cakes to rise when they are in the oven.
- balanced diet — a diet consisting of the proper quantities and proportions of foods needed to maintain health or growth.
- balanced fund — a mutual fund made up of both stocks and bonds
- balanced line — a transmission line in which the oppositely directed components are symmetrical with respect to each other and to the ground.
- balanced step — any of a series of staircase winders so planned that they are nearly as wide at the inside of the stair as the adjacent fliers.
- balanced tree — (algorithm) An optimisation of a tree which aims to keep equal numbers of items on each subtree of each node so as to minimise the maximum path from the root to any leaf node. As items are inserted and deleted, the tree is restructured to keep the nodes balanced and the search paths uniform. Such an algorithm is appropriate where the overheads of the reorganisation on update are outweighed by the benefits of faster search. A B-tree is a kind of balanced tree that can have more than two subtrees at each node (i.e. one that is not restricted to being a binary tree).
- ballet dancer — a man or woman who takes part in ballet dancing, usually professionally
- balloon shade — a window shade that when raised is gathered into a series of puffy festoons created by inverted pleats in the fabric.
- baltic shield — the wide area of ancient rock in Scandinavia
- banana bender — a native or inhabitant of Queensland
- banana spider — a large, yellowish, tropical crab spider (Heteropoda venatoria) occasionally found in bunches of bananas shipped to the Temperate Zones
- band spectrum — a spectrum consisting of a number of bands of closely spaced lines that are associated with emission or absorption of radiation by molecules
- band together — If people band together, they meet and act as a group in order to try and achieve something.
- banded purple — any color having components of both red and blue, such as lavender, especially one deep in tone.
- banderilleros — Plural form of banderillero.
- bandspreading — an additional tuning control in some radio receivers whereby a selected narrow band of frequencies can be spread over a wider frequency band, in order to give finer control of tuning
- barbados aloe — a tropical aloe, Aloe barbadensis (or A. vera), of the lily family, having clusters of yellow flowers: its juice is used medicinally.
- barefacedness — The state or quality of being barefaced.
- barnacle code — (programming, humour) Any piece of code (usually a static method) that has been appended to a class where it doesn't logically belong, due to a lack of anywhere else to put it.
- barred spiral — a spiral galaxy in which the arms originate at the ends of a bar-shaped nucleus
- barrel-shaped — having the shape of a barrel
- basel accords — the three sets of rules, Basel I, Basel II, and Basel III, for regulating the banking industry, drawn up by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision
- basidiomycete — any fungus of the phylum Basidiomycota (formerly class Basidiomycetes), in which the spores are produced in basidia. The group includes boletes, puffballs, smuts, and rusts
- basidiospores — Plural form of basidiospore.
- basket dinner — a group social gathering, as of church members, to which participants contribute casseroles or other dishes to share.
- bastard amber — a color of gelatin commonly used in stage lighting, similar to light amber but having a pinkish cast.
- bastard eigne — the first-born illegitimate son of parents whose second son was legitimate.
- bastard title — half title (def 1).
- bastard-title — Also called bastard title. the first printed page of certain books, appearing after the end papers and before the title page and containing only the title of the book.
- bat-eared fox — a fox, Vulpes chama, inhabiting dry areas of southern Africa and having large pointed ears, silvery gray coat, and a bushy tail with a black tip.
- battered wife — See under battered woman syndrome.
- batting order — the sequence in which hitters will bat in a given game, determined in advance by the team manager.
- battlegrounds — Plural form of battleground.
- be hard going — If you say that something is hard going, you mean it is difficult and requires a lot of effort.
- be upstanding — (in a court of law) a direction to all persons present to rise to their feet before the judge enters or leaves the court
- be wild about — If you are wild about someone or something, you like them very much.
- beached whale — large sea mammal stranded on shore
- bead and reel — a convex molding having the form of elongated beads alternating with disks placed edge-on, or with spherical beads, or with both.
- beaded lizard — a large, stout-bodied, venomous lizard, Heloderma horridum, inhabiting western Mexico, having black, beadlike scales with yellow to pinkish spots and splotches.
- beaked salmon — sandfish (def 2).
- beaked-salmon — sandfish (def 2).
- bearing sword — a large sword carried for its owner by a squire or servant because of its size.
- beat the band — a company of persons or, sometimes, animals or things, joined, acting, or functioning together; aggregation; party; troop: a band of protesters.
- beat the drum — a musical percussion instrument consisting of a hollow, usually cylindrical, body covered at one or both ends with a tightly stretched membrane, or head, which is struck with the hand, a stick, or a pair of sticks, and typically produces a booming, tapping, or hollow sound.
- beauty editor — the person in charge of a section of newspaper or magazine devoted to cosmetics, etc
- bed and board — sleeping accommodation and meals
- bedaux system — a system of payment for work on the basis of the number of points of work done in a given amount of time, each point representing one minute of work on a given job at a normal rate of speed.
- bedding plane — the surface separating two successive layers of stratified rock
- bedding plant — A bedding plant is a plant which lasts for one year. It is put in a flower bed before it flowers, and is then removed when it has finished flowering.
- bedding-plant — bedmaker (def 1).