16-letter words containing e, a, t, r, y
- barclay de tolly — Prince Mikhail (mixaˈil). 1761–1818, Russian field marshal: commander in chief against Napoleon in 1812
- batesian mimicry — mimicry in which a harmless species is protected from predators by means of its resemblance to a harmful or inedible species
- bathythermograph — a device for measuring the temperature of the ocean at any specific depth down to c. 1,800 m (c. 5,900 ft)
- batlle y ordonez — José [haw-se] /hɔˈsɛ/ (Show IPA), 1856–1929, Uruguayan statesman: president of Uruguay 1903–07, 1911–15.
- battery-operated — powered, driven, or operated with batteries
- bayonet practice — drill in the use of a bayonet
- bearish tendency — a tendency for share prices to fall
- beauty therapist — a person whose job is to carry out treatments to improve a person's appearance, such as facials, manicures, removal of unwanted hair, etc
- beauty treatment — the use of some form of treatment to improve someone's beauty such as a facial, manicure or depilation
- behavior therapy — therapy employing behavior modification
- bidirectionality — capable of reacting or functioning in two, usually opposite, directions.
- billy goat beard — a man's beard that is long under the chin and shaved elsewhere
- binary operation — a mathematical operation in which two elements are combined to yield a single result: Addition and multiplication are binary operations on the set of real numbers.
- biodegradability — capable of decaying through the action of living organisms: biodegradable paper; biodegradable detergent.
- birthday present — a gift given to someone on their birthday
- black-letter day — an unlucky or tragic day.
- bootstrap memory — memory that allows new programs to be entered because some simple preliminary instructions or information are already built in.
- boston tea party — a raid in 1773 made by citizens of Boston (disguised as Indians) on three British ships in the harbour as a protest against taxes on tea and the monopoly given to the East India Company. The contents of several hundred chests of tea were dumped into the harbour
- boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
- bright and early — very early in the morning
- brittany spaniel — a short-tailed French bird dog that typically has a smooth orange- or liver-and-white coat
- bunker mentality — a defensive attitude in which others are seen as hostile or potentially hostile
- bureaucratically — of, relating to, or characteristic of a bureaucrat or a bureaucracy; arbitrary and routine.
- bury the hatchet — to cease hostilities and become reconciled
- buttercup family — the plant family Ranunculaceae, typified by mostly herbaceous plants having usually alternate leaves, multistaminate flowers sometimes lacking petals but with colorful sepals, and including the anemone, buttercup, clematis, columbine, delphinium, and monkshood.
- butterfly ballot — a ballot paper in the form of two leaves extending from a central spine
- butterfly damper — a damper, as in a flue, that rotates about a central axis across its face.
- bypass operation — an operation involving redirection of blood flow, either to avoid a diseased blood vessel or in order to perform heart surgery
- byzantine church — Orthodox Church (def 1).
- byzantine empire — the continuation of the Roman Empire in the East, esp after the deposition of the last emperor in Rome (476 ad). It was finally extinguished by the fall of Constantinople, its capital, in 1453
- cabbage root fly — a dipterous fly, Erioischia brassicae, whose larvae feed on the roots and stems of cabbages and other brassicas: family Muscidae (houseflies, etc)
- calorimetrically — In a calorimetric manner.
- canterbury bells — a cultivated bellflower (Campanula medium) with white, pink, or blue cuplike flowers
- canterbury tales — an unfinished literary work by Chaucer, largely in verse, consisting of stories told by pilgrims on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket at Canterbury
- carboxylesterase — (enzyme) Any enzyme that catalyses the hydrolysis of a carboxylic ester.
- carboxypeptidase — any of several digestive enzymes that catalyze the removal of an amino acid from the end of a peptide chain having a free carbonyl group.
- cartridge player — an audio or video system that reads cartridges of magnetic tape
- catachrestically — In a catachrestic way.
- category listing — A category listing is a list of different product categories such as menswear, womenswear, and childrenswear.
- category mistake — a sentence that says of something in one category what can only intelligibly be said of something in another, as when speaking of the mind located in space
- category planner — A category planner is a person whose job to plan and co-ordinate future inventory and sales volume in one or more product categories.
- cathode ray tube — (hardware) (CRT) An electrical device for displaying images by exciting phosphor dots with a scanned electron beam. CRTs are found in computer VDUs and monitors, televisions and oscilloscopes. The first commercially practical CRT was perfected on 29 January 1901 by Allen B DuMont. A large glass envelope containing a negative electrode (the cathode) emits electrons (formerly called "cathode rays") when heated, as in a vacuum tube. The electrons are accelerated across a large voltage gradient toward the flat surface of the tube (the screen) which is covered with phosphor. When an electron strikes the phosphor, light is emitted. The electron beam is deflected by electromagnetic coils around the outside of the tube so that it scans across the screen, usually in horizontal stripes. This scan pattern is known as a raster. By controlling the current in the beam, the brightness at any particular point (roughly a "pixel") can be varied. Different phosphors have different "persistence" - the length of time for which they glow after being struck by electrons. If the scanning is done fast enough, the eye sees a steady image, due to both the persistence of the phospor and of the eye itself. CRTs also differ in their dot pitch, which determines their spatial resolution, and in whether they use interlace or not.
- cathode-ray tube — A cathode-ray tube is a device in televisions and computer terminals which sends an image onto the screen.
- cavity resonator — a conducting surface enclosing a space in which an oscillating electromagnetic field can be maintained, the dimensions of the cavity determining the resonant frequency of the oscillations. It is used in microwave devices for frequencies exceeding 300 megahertz
- cayenne software — (company) The company formed when CADRE merged with Bachman Information Systems in July 1996.
- celebrity status — the prominence of film star, footballer, musician etc who is constantly photographed and written about in tabloids and magazines
- central cylinder — stele (def 4).
- central tendency — the tendency of the values of a random variable to cluster around the mean, median, and mode
- centrally heated — A centrally heated building or room has central heating.
- cervera y topete — Pascual [pahs-kwahl] /pɑsˈkwɑl/ (Show IPA), 1839–1909, Spanish admiral.