15-letter words containing d, u, r
- bad housekeeper — a person who is not an efficient and thrifty domestic manager
- badminton court — the court on which games of badminton are played
- balanced rudder — a rudder so designed that the center of water pressure on the forward face, when turned, lies about halfway along the length, minimizing the turning effort required.
- banking product — one of the various services offered by a bank to its customers: mortgages, loans, insurance etc
- barbituric acid — a white crystalline solid used in the preparation of barbiturate drugs. Formula: C4H4N2O3
- barium chloride — a poisonous compound, BaCl2, consisting of flat white crystals that are soluble in water: it is used to treat water, metals, leather, etc.
- barium peroxide — a gray-white powder, BaO2, used as a bleach and in making hydrogen peroxide
- basic autocoder — Early system on IBM 7070. Listed in CACM 2(5):16 (May 1959).
- bathurst island — an island off the coast of N Nunavut, Canada, in the Arctic Archipelago: present south of the North Magnetic Pole nearby. 7609 sq. mi. (19,707 sq. km).
- be snowed under — to be overwhelmed, esp with paperwork
- bearded vulture — lammergeier
- beast of burden — A beast of burden is an animal such as an ox or a donkey that is used for carrying or pulling things.
- benzyl fluoride — a colorless liquid, C 7 H 7 F, used in organic synthesis.
- big muddy river — a river in SW Illinois, flowing SW into the Mississippi. About 120 miles (195 km) long.
- biodestructible — biodegradable
- black horehound — a hairy unpleasant-smelling chiefly Mediterranean plant, Ballota nigra, having clusters of purple flowers: family Lamiaceae (labiates)
- blockade runner — a person, ship etc that tries to carry goods through a blockade
- blockade-runner — a ship or person that passes through a blockade.
- blood corpuscle — one of the cells in the blood
- bloody butchers — a hardy plant, Trillium sessile, common from New York to Georgia and westward, having stalkless, purple or green flowers.
- blue wood aster — a composite plant, Aster cordifolius, of North America, having heart-shaped leaves and pale-blue flowers.
- blue-eyed grass — any of various mainly North American iridaceous marsh plants of the genus Sisyrinchium that have grasslike leaves and small flat starlike blue flowers
- bonheur-du-jour — a delicate fall-front desk of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
- boustrophedonic — of or relating to lines written in opposite directions
- break the mould — If you say that someone breaks the mould, you mean that they do completely different things from what has been done before or from what is usually done.
- breeding ground — If you refer to a situation or place as a breeding ground for something bad such as crime, you mean that this thing can easily develop in that situation or place.
- bridge-building — efforts to establish communications and friendly contacts between people in order to make them friends or allies
- brunner's gland — any of the glands in the submucosal layer of the duodenum, secreting an alkaline fluid into the small intestine.
- brush discharge — a slightly luminous electrical discharge between points of high charge density when the charge density is insufficient to cause a spark or around sharp points on a highly charged conductor because of ionization of air molecules in their vicinity
- buffalo soldier — (formerly, especially among American Indians) a black soldier.
- building permit — a permit for construction work
- building trades — the trades and professions concerned with the creation and finishing of buildings, such as carpenters, plasterers, masons, electricians, etc.
- building worker — a labourer, bricklayer, etc who works in the construction industry
- bullnose header — bull header (def 1).
- bullnose-header — Also called bullnose header. a brick having one of the edges across its width rounded for laying as a header in a sill or the like.
- burden of proof — The burden of proof is the task of proving that you are correct, for example when you have accused someone of a crime.
- buried treasure — A surprising piece of code found in some program. While usually not wrong, it tends to vary from crufty to bletcherous, and has lain undiscovered only because it was functionally correct, however horrible it is. Used sarcastically, because what is found is anything *but* treasure. Buried treasure almost always needs to be dug up and removed. "I just found that the scheduler sorts its queue using bubble sort! Buried treasure!"
- burt l standish — Burt L. pseudonym of Gilbert Patten.
- bury st edmunds — a market town in E England, in Suffolk. Pop: 36 218 (2001)
- butter spreader — a small knife with a wide, flat blade, as for spreading butter on bread or rolls.
- butter-and-eggs — any of various plants, such as toadflax, the flowers of which are of two shades of yellow
- butter-fingered — a person who frequently drops things; clumsy person.
- butterfly wedge — a wooden fastening in the form of a double dovetail for joining two boards at their edges.
- buttress thread — a screw thread having one flank that is vertical while the other is inclined, and a flat top and bottom: used in machine tools and designed to withstand heavy thrust in one direction
- cache la poudre — a river in N Colorado, flowing N and E to the South Platte River. 126 miles (203 km) long.
- calcium carbide — a grey salt of calcium used in the production of acetylene (by its reaction with water) and calcium cyanamide. Formula: CaC2
- calculated risk — a chance of failure, the probability of which is estimated before some action is undertaken.
- cardinal humour — any of the four bodily fluids (blood, phlegm, choler or yellow bile, melancholy or black bile) formerly thought to determine emotional and physical disposition
- cardinal number — A cardinal number is a number such as 1, 3, or 10 that tells you how many things there are in a group but not what order they are in. Compare ordinal number.
- cardinal virtue — anything considered to be an important or characteristic virtue: Tenacity is his cardinal virtue.