15-letter words containing e, r, u, d
- 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!"
- 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 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.
- cartesian doubt — willful suspension of all interpretations of experience that are not absolutely certain: used as a method of deriving, by elimination of such uncertainties, axioms upon which to base theories.
- casters-up mode — [IBM, probably from slang belly up] Yet another synonym for "broken" or "down". Usually connotes a major failure. A system (hardware or software) which is "down" may be already being restarted before the failure is noticed, whereas one which is "casters up" is usually a good excuse to take the rest of the day off (as long as you're not responsible for fixing it).
- cell disruption — Cell disruption is when a biological material becomes smaller to release proteins and enzymes.
- central sudanic — a group of languages belonging to the Nilo-Saharan family, spoken in the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, northern Uganda, southern Sudan, Chad, and the Central African Republic, and including Mangbetu.
- character study — a work of fiction in which the delineation of the central character's personality is more important than the plot.
- charles doughty — Charles Montagu [mon-tuh-gyoo] /ˈmɒn təˌgyu/ (Show IPA), 1843–1926, English traveler and writer.
- children's hour — a play (1934) by Lillian Hellman.
- chinese mustard — brown mustard.
- chorale prelude — a composition for organ using a chorale as a cantus firmus or as the basis for variations
- chromium-plated — having been plated with chromium
- chudskoye ozero — Russian name of Peipus.
- church calendar — ecclesiastical calendar (def 2).
- church-calendar — a calendar based on the lunisolar cycle, used by many Christian churches in determining the dates for the movable feasts.