12-letter words containing e, m, b, l
- bicameralism — having two branches, chambers, or houses, as a legislative body.
- bicycle pump — a hand pump for pumping air into the tyres of a bicycle
- bidialectism — proficient in or using two dialects of the same language.
- bilateralism — the practice of being bilateral
- bimillennial — relating to a bimillennium
- bimillennium — a period of two thousand years
- bimorph cell — a piezoelectric transducer consisting of two crystals cemented together, used in microphones, headphones, loudspeakers, etc. to convert vibrations into a voltage output or to convert a signal voltage into vibrations that can produce audible sounds
- biomolecular — relating to a biomolecule
- biotelemetry — the monitoring of biological functions in humans or animals by means of a miniature transmitter that sends data to a distant point to be read by electronic instruments
- bitter lemon — a non-alcoholic, fizzy drink with a lemon flavour
- bitter melon — balsam pear.
- blabbermouth — a person who talks too much or indiscreetly
- black comedy — a comedy dealing with an unpleasant situation in a pessimistic or macabre manner
- black market — If something is bought or sold on the black market, it is bought or sold illegally.
- black medick — a small European leguminous plant, Medicago lupulina, with trifoliate leaves, small yellow flowers, and black pods
- black stream — a warm ocean current in the Pacific, flowing N along the E coast of Taiwan, NE along the E coast of Japan, and continuing in an easterly direction into the open Pacific.
- black-market — to black-marketeer.
- bladder worm — an encysted saclike larva of the tapeworm. The main types are cysticercus, hydatid, and coenurus
- blamableness — the state of being blamable
- blandishment — the act of blandishing; cajolery
- blastomycete — any of a genus (Blastomyces) of yeastlike imperfect fungi that cause diseases in people and animals
- blimpishness — actions or behaviour akin to those of the fictional character of Colonel Blimp, or the quality of resembling this character
- blind-emboss — blind-stamp.
- block system — the system whereby a railway is divided up into separate sections of track where only one train can travel at a time
- bloemfontein — a city in central South Africa: capital of Free State province and judicial capital of the country. Pop: 111 698 (2001)
- blood sample — an amount of a person's blood taken from their body for use in medical tests
- blood volume — the total quantity of blood in the body
- bloomingdale — a town in NE Illinois.
- blue helmets — armed troops under the sponsorship of the United Nations, used for peacekeeping
- blue jasmine — a southern U.S. shrubby vine, Clematis crispa, of the buttercup family, having solitary, bell-shaped, blue or bluish-purple to pink flowers and bearing fruit with silky appendages.
- blue melilot — a European plant, Trigonella caerulea, of the legume family, having long-stalked clusters of blue and white flowers.
- blue swimmer — an edible bluish Australian swimming crab, Portunus pelagicus
- boilermaking — metal-working in heavy industry; plating or welding
- bolshevikism — the doctrines, methods, or procedure of the Bolsheviks.
- bomb shelter — a shelter, usually underground, in which people take refuge from bomb attacks
- bombe glacée — a dessert of ice cream lined or filled with custard, cake crumbs, etc
- bomber pilot — the pilot of a bomber
- bottom-liner — a person, as an executive, accountant, or stockholder, who puts the net profits of a business ahead of all other considerations.
- bottomlessly — from a bottomless point of view
- bracket lamp — a wall light that is attached to the wall by a bracket
- brambleberry — the fruit of a bramble.
- bristlemouth — any of several small, deep-sea fishes of the family Gonostomatidae, having numerous sharp, slender teeth covering the jaws.
- bronze medal — A bronze medal is a medal made of bronze or bronze-coloured metal that is given as a prize to the person who comes third in a competition, especially a sports contest.
- bubblegummer — a young teenager; adolescent.
- bumble-puppy — a game in which a ball, attached by string to a post, is hit so that the string winds round the post
- bumbleheaded — clumsy, plodding, or foolish: He stumbled through the talk in his bumbleheaded way.
- by all means — You can say 'by all means' to tell someone that you are very willing to allow them to do something.
- cabbage palm — a West Indian palm, Roystonea (or Oreodoxa) oleracea, whose leaf buds are eaten like cabbage
- call-by-name — (reduction) (CBN) (Normal order reduction, leftmost, outermost reduction). An argument passing convention (first provided by ALGOL 60?) where argument expressions are passed unevaluated. This is usually implemented by passing a pointer to a thunk - some code which will return the value of the argument and an environment giving the values of its free variables. This evaluation strategy is guaranteed to reach a normal form if one exists. When used to implement functional programming languages, call-by-name is usually combined with graph reduction to avoid repeated evaluation of the same expression. This is then known as call-by-need. The opposite of call-by-name is call-by-value where arguments are evaluated before they are passed to a function. This is more efficient but is less likely to terminate in the presence of infinite data structures and recursive functions. Arguments to macros are usually passed using call-by-name.
- carbamylurea — biuret.