19-letter words containing e, n, r, o
- bankruptcy petition — an official request for protection under bankruptcy laws, which initiates bankruptcy proceedings
- barometric gradient — pressure gradient
- battle-ground state — a state of the U.S. in which the Democratic and Republican candidates both have a good chance of winning and that is considered key to the outcome of a presidential election: the swing states of Ohio and Indiana.
- battles of bull run — two battles fought at Manassas Junction near a stream named Bull Run, during the American Civil War (July, 1861 and August, 1862), in both of which the Federal army was routed by the Confederates
- bbc networking club — (body) A bulletin board run by the British Broadcasting Corporation Education department from April 1994 to 30 Nov 1995.
- be burnt to a crisp — If something is burnt to a crisp, it is completely burnt.
- be greek to someone — to be incomprehensible or unintelligible to someone
- be one's own master — If you say that you are your own master, you mean that your decisions are not controlled by other people and you are free to do what you want.
- be one's own person — a human being, whether an adult or child: The table seats four persons.
- be someone's junior — to be younger than someone
- beauty preparations — the cosmetics, creams etc used to improve someone's beauty
- beggar-my-neighbour — a card game in which one player tries to win all the cards of the other player
- beginning inventory — A beginning inventory is all of the goods, services, or materials that a business has available for use or sale at the start of a new accounting period.
- behavioral genetics — an interdisciplinary field studying the effects of genetics and hereditary factors on animal and human behavior.
- behavioral medicine — an interdisciplinary field that uses the concepts and techniques of the behavioral sciences to improve physical and emotional health.
- behavioural science — the application of scientific methods to the study of the behaviour of organisms
- behind closed doors — If people have talks and discussions behind closed doors, they have them in private because they want them to be kept secret.
- bellybutton surgery — laparoscopy.
- below par/under par — If you feel below par or under par, you feel tired and unable to perform as well as you normally do.
- bend over backwards — to make a special effort, esp in order to please
- benefit performance — a theatrical or musical performance in aid of charity
- bernoulli principle — (Or "air foil principle", after Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli, 1700-1782) The law that pressure in a fluid decreases with the rate of flow. It has been applied to a class of hard disk drives. See Bernoulli Box.
- bernoulli's theorem — Statistics. law of averages (def 1).
- bernstein condition — (parallel) Processes cannot execute in parallel if one effects values used by the other. Nor can they execute in parallel if any subsequent process uses data effected by both, i.e. whose value might depend on the order of execution.
- beta-naphthyl group — See under naphthyl.
- betamethyl acrolein — crotonaldehyde.
- bicarbonate of soda — Bicarbonate of soda is a white powder which is used in baking to make cakes rise, and also as a medicine for your stomach.
- binary large object — (database) (BLOB) A large block of data stored in a database, such as an image or sound file. A BLOB has no structure which can be interpreted by the database management system but is known only by its size and location.
- binomial experiment — an experiment consisting of a fixed number of independent trials each with two possible outcomes, success and failure, and the same probability of success. The probability of a given number of successes is described by a binominal distribution
- blood-brain barrier — the barrier created by the walls of the capillaries of the brain that prevents certain substances, as most proteins and drugs, from passing from the blood into the brain tissue and cerebrospinal fluid
- blow one's own horn — If you blow your own horn, you boast about yourself.
- blowing your buffer — (jargon) Losing your train of thought. A reference to buffer overflow.
- blue screen of life — (operating system) (BSOL, by analogy with "Blue Screen of Death") The opening screen of Microsoft Windows NT. This screen shows the file system loading, and any problems such as conversions from FAT to NTFS or a scan of a hard drive. The Blue Screen of Life occurs in one way, as opposed to the Blue Screen of Death, which can occur in many different ways and times.
- blue-ringed octopus — a highly venomous octopus, Octopus maculosus, of E Australia which exhibits blue bands on its tentacles when disturbed
- blue-tongued lizard — a large Australian lizard, Tiliqua scincoides, characterized by having a cobalt-blue tongue.
- board certification — the process of certifying that a physician has passed an examination and met the standards of a professional organization representing a particular medical specialty.
- board of trade unit — a unit of electrical energy equal to 1 kilowatt-hour
- booker t washington — Booker T(aliaferro) [boo k-er tol-uh-ver] /ˈbʊk ər ˈtɒl ə vər/ (Show IPA), 1856–1915, U.S. reformer, educator, author, and lecturer.
- bordering countries — countries that share a border with a particular country
- born out of wedlock — born when one's parents are not legally married
- bracket abstraction — (compiler) An algorithm which turns a term into a function of some variable. The result of using bracket abstraction on T with respect to variable v, written as [v]T, is a term containing no occurrences of v and denoting a function f such that f v = T. This defines the function f = (\ v . T). Using bracket abstraction and currying we can define a language without bound variables in which the only operation is monadic function application. See combinator.
- brazen law of wages — the doctrine or theory that wages tend toward a level sufficient only to maintain a subsistence standard of living.
- brimstone butterfly — a common yellow butterfly, Gonepteryx rhamni, of N temperate regions of the Old World: family Pieridae
- bring into the open — to make evident or public
- brokered convention — a party convention in which many delegates are pledged to favorite sons who use their blocs of votes to bargain with leading candidates who lack a majority of delegate support.
- brown paper bag bug — (programming) A programming bug that is so stupid that it makes the programmer want to put a brown paper bag over his head.
- bulbourethral gland — Cowper's gland
- buster brown collar — a medium-sized, starched collar with rounded edges, lying flat on the shoulders, worn by women and girls.
- by one's bootstraps — by one's own efforts; unaided
- california bluebell — either of two plants, Phacelia campanularia or P. minor, of southern California, having ovate leaves and bell-shaped blue or purple flowers.