14-letter words containing d, l, s
- barrier island — a long island, parallel to the coastline, formed from a ridge of sand (barrier beach) thrown up by the waves, that serves the shore as a protective barrier against tidal waves, storms, etc.
- bascule bridge — a kind of drawbridge counterweighted so that it can be raised and lowered easily
- bascule-bridge — a device operating like a balance or seesaw, especially an arrangement of a movable bridge (bascule bridge) by which the rising floor or section is counterbalanced by a weight.
- basket-of-gold — a yellow-flowered perennial plant (Alyssum saxatile, now more properly Aurinia saxatilis) of the crucifer family, often used in rock gardens
- bastard ridley — ridley (def 1).
- bastard turtle — ridley (def 1).
- bastard-ridley — ridley (def 1).
- bastard-turtle — ridley (def 1).
- battle-scarred — adversely affected from the experience of battle, or some other traumatic experience
- bedraggledness — The state or condition of being bedraggled.
- bend the rules — to ignore rules or change them to suit one's own convenience
- benzosulfimide — saccharin.
- berkner island — an island in Antarctica, in the S Weddell Sea, between the Ronne Ice Shelf and the Filchner Ice Shelf.
- beside oneself — If you are beside yourself with anger or excitement, you are extremely angry or excited.
- bewilderedness — the state of being bewildered
- bicuspid valve — mitral valve
- bidialectalism — the state of being bidialectal
- bildungsromane — a type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist.
- 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.
- 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 diamonds — carbonado1 .
- black redstart — a small, Passerine bird, Phoenicurus ochruros, found in Central and S Europe
- blade-shearing — the shearing of sheep using hand shears
- blessed virgin — the Virgin Mary
- blind as a bat — having extremely poor eyesight
- blind register — (in the United Kingdom) a list of those who are blind and are therefore entitled to financial and other benefits
- blind staggers — the staggers
- blind stamping — an impression on a book cover without using colour or gold leaf
- blister-packed — presented in a blister pack
- blood and guts — dealing with or depicting war or violence, especially in a lurid manner: a blood-and-guts movie.
- blood boosting — a procedure in which an athlete is injected with erythropoietin, his or her own blood, or the blood of a family member prior to competition, purportedly increasing the blood's oxygen-carrying capacity as a result of the addition of red blood cells.
- blood disorder — a medical condition affecting the blood
- blood pressure — the pressure exerted by the blood on the inner walls of the arteries, being relative to the elasticity and diameter of the vessels and the force of the heartbeat
- blood spinning — a medical treatment, a use for which is the healing of sports-related injuries, that involves removing the platelet cells from the patient’s blood sample then injecting them into the injured area in order to speed recovery
- blood-and-guts — dealing with or depicting war or violence, especially in a lurid manner: a blood-and-guts movie.
- blow one's lid — a removable or hinged cover for closing the opening, usually at the top, of a pot, jar, trunk, etc.; a movable cover.
- blue-arsed fly — a blowfly; bluebottle
- blue-eyed soul — soul music written and performed by White singers in a style derived from the blues
- blurred vision — a condition which makes it impossible to see clearly
- bobo-dioulasso — a city in W Burkina Faso. Pop: 396 000 (2005 est)
- bosworth field — the site, two miles south of Market Bosworth in Leicestershire, of the battle that ended the Wars of the Roses (August 1485). Richard III was killed and Henry Tudor was crowned king as Henry VII
- braddock hills — a town in SE Pennsylvania.
- bras d'or lake — an arm of the Atlantic Ocean in the center Cape Breton Island, in Nova Scotia, Canada. 360 sq. mi. (930 sq. km).
- brazing solder — an alloy of copper and zinc for joining two metal surfaces by melting the alloy so that it forms a thin layer between the surfaces
- british dollar — any of several coins formerly issued by the British Empire for use in certain territories, as the Straits dollar or the Hong Kong dollar.
- budget surplus — the amount by which government income from taxation, customs duties, etc, exceeds expenditure in any one fiscal year
- builder's knot — clove hitch
- building works — construction projects
- bull-nosed bow — a bow having a bulbous forefoot.
- caicos islands — a group of islands in the Caribbean: part of the British dependency of the Turks and Caicos Islands