16-letter words containing d, e, s, t
- assisted passage — a scheme whereby a government encourages people to emigrate or return home by agreeing to pay for their ticket
- assisted suicide — suicide committed with the assistance of a physician by a person terminally ill or in unmanageable pain
- associate degree — An associate degree is a college degree that is awarded to a student who has completed a two-year course of study.
- associated state — a nation with limited sovereignty, especially a former colony that now assumes responsibility for domestic affairs but continues to depend on the colonial ruler for defense and foreign policy.
- aston dark space — the dark region between the cathode and the cathode glow in a vacuum tube, occurring when the pressure is low.
- at daggers drawn — If you say that two people are at daggers drawn, you mean they are having an argument and are still very angry with each other.
- at the sharp end — If you say that someone is at the sharp end of a particular activity or type of work, you mean that they are involved in the most difficult or dangerous aspects of it.
- athanasian creed — a profession of faith widely used in the Western Church which, although formerly attributed to Athanasius, probably originated in Gaul between 381 and 428 ad
- atmospheric tide — a movement of atmospheric masses caused by the gravitational attraction of the sun and moon and by daily solar heating.
- attendance sheet — an official document for listing those attending a meeting, class, course, etc
- atwood's machine — a device consisting of two unequal masses connected by a string passed over a pulley, used to illustrate the laws of motion.
- auditory vesicle — the pouch that is formed by the invagination of an ectodermal placode and that develops into the internal ear.
- average adjuster — a person who calculates average claims, esp for marine insurance
- 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.
- band-pass filter — a filter that transmits only those currents having a frequency lying within specified limits
- banned substance — In sport, banned substances are drugs that competitors are not allowed to take because they could artificially improve their performance.
- baron tweedsmuir — the title of Scottish novelist John Buchan
- 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 daughter — an illegitimate daughter
- be as good as to — would you please
- bearing pedestal — an independent support for a bearing, usually incorporating a bearing housing
- bearish tendency — a tendency for share prices to fall
- bed-sitting room — a combined bedroom and sitting room serving as a one-room apartment
- behind the times — You can use the times to refer to the present time and to modern fashions, tastes, and developments. For example, if you say that someone keeps up with the times, you mean they are fashionable or aware of modern developments. If you say they are behind the times, you mean they are unfashionable or not aware of them.
- 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.
- benzoate of soda — sodium benzoate
- bertrand russell — (person) (1872-1970) A British mathematician, the discoverer of Russell's paradox.
- beside the point — If you say that something is beside the point, you mean that it is not relevant to the subject that you are discussing.
- best-before date — a date on packaged food indicating how long it is safe to keep it
- bias-belted tire — belted-bias tire.
- bird's-nest fern — a tropical fern, Asplenium nidus, having fronds arranged in clumps resembling a bird's nest.
- bird's-nest soup — a rich spicy Chinese soup made from the outer part of the nests of SE Asian swifts of the genus Collocalia
- birthday present — a gift given to someone on their birthday
- 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
- bleeder resistor — a resistor connected across the output terminals of a power supply in order to improve voltage regulation and to discharge filter capacitors
- block-structured — (language) Any programming language in which sections of source code contained within pairs of matching delimiters such as "" and "" (e.g. in C) or "begin" and "end" (e.g. Algol) are executed as a single unit. A block of code may be the body of a subroutine or function, or it may be controlled by conditional execution (if statement) or repeated execution (while statement, for statement, etc.). In all but the most primitive block structured languages a variable's scope can be limited to the block in which it is declared. Block-structured languages support structured programming where each block can be written without detailed knowledge of the inner workings of other blocks, thus allowing a top-down design approach. See also abstract data type, module.
- blood substitute — a substance such as plasma, albumin, or dextran, used to replace lost blood or increase the blood volume
- bootstrap loader — (operating system) A short program loaded from non-volatile storage and used to bootstrap a computer. On early computers great efforts were expended on making the bootstrap loader short, in order to make it easy to toggle in via the front panel switches. It was just clever enough to read in a slightly more complex program (usually from punched cards or paper tape), to which it handed control. This program in turn read the application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk drive. Thus, in successive steps, the computer "pulled itself up by its bootstraps" to a useful operating state. Nowadays the bootstrap loader is usually found in ROM or EPROM, and reads the first stage in from a fixed location on the disk, called the "boot block". When this program gains control, it is powerful enough to load the actual OS and hand control over to it. A diskless workstation can use bootp to load its OS from the network.
- border leicester — a breed of sheep originally developed in the border country between Scotland and England by crossing English Leicesters with Cheviots: large numbers in Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand. It has a long white fleece with no wool on the head
- boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
- braking distance — the distance a vehicle travels from the point at which its brakes are applied to the point at which it comes to a stop
- brave west winds — the strong west and west-northwest winds blowing between latitudes 40° S and 60° S.
- bright's disease — chronic inflammation of the kidneys; chronic nephritis
- bright-blindness — blindness occurring in sheep grazing pastures heavily infested with bracken
- brittle diabetes — uncontrolled insulin disorder
- building society — In Britain, a building society is a business which will lend you money when you want to buy a house. You can also invest money in a building society, where it will earn interest. Compare savings and loan association.
- bundled software — software sold as part of a package with computers or other hardware or software
- bury st. edmunds — a city in W Suffolk, in E England: medieval shrine.