12-letter words containing h, a, b
- boar-hunting — the practice of hunting wild boars
- board school — (formerly) a school managed by a board elected by local ratepayers
- board shorts — shorts with longer legs, originally meant to protect a surfer's legs against the surfboard
- boatsmanship — seamanship as applied to boats, especially rowboats and motorboats.
- bog asphodel — either of two liliaceous plants, Narthecium ossifragum of Europe or N. americanum of North America, that grow in boggy places and have small yellow flowers and grasslike leaves
- boghead coal — compact bituminous coal that burns brightly and yields large quantities of tar and oil upon distillation.
- bombay hills — a row of hills marking the southern boundary of greater Auckland on the North Island, New Zealand
- bond washing — a series of deals in bonds made with the intention of avoiding taxation
- bonne chance — good luck
- book matches — safety matches made of paper and fastened into a small cardboard folder
- borough hall — a building housing the administrative offices of a borough.
- bothy ballad — a folk song, esp one from the farming community of NE Scotland
- bottlewasher — a person or machine that washes bottles.
- bounce flash — a flash lamp designed to produce a bounced flash.
- bound charge — any electric charge that is bound to an atom or molecule (opposed to free charge).
- boxing match — a competition between two boxers
- brachycephal — a person with a brachycephalic head
- brachycerous — (of insects) having short antennae
- brachycranic — having a cranial index of 81.0–85.4.
- brachygraphy — shorthand; stenography
- brahma samaj — a modern Hindu movement advocating a monotheistic religion based on the Upanishads, and social and educational reforms according to Western principles.
- brahmacharya — the stage of life of the student, entailing study of the Vedas and complete celibacy, usually lasting for twelve years.
- brainwashing — the process of brainwashing.
- branch depot — one of a several depots receiving stock from the same central supplier
- branch plant — a plant or factory in Canada belonging to a company whose headquarters are in another country
- branch point — Electricity. a point in an electric network at which three or more conductors meet.
- branch water — water from a stream, as opposed to mineral or soda water
- braunschweig — Brunswick
- breakthrough — A breakthrough is an important development or achievement.
- breakweather — any makeshift shelter.
- breast wheel — a waterwheel onto which the propelling water is fed at the height of a horizontal axle.
- breastplough — a plough driven by the worker's breast, often used to pare turf
- breath group — a sequence of sounds articulated in the course of a single exhalation; an utterance or part of an utterance produced between pauses for breath.
- breathalyser — a device for estimating the amount of alcohol in the breath: used in testing people suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol
- breathalyzer — A Breathalyzer is a bag or electronic device that the police use to test whether a driver has drunk too much alcohol.
- breathe easy — to take air, oxygen, etc., into the lungs and expel it; inhale and exhale; respire.
- breathlessly — without breath or breathing with difficulty; gasping; panting: We were breathless after the steep climb.
- breathtaking — If you say that something is breathtaking, you are emphasizing that it is extremely beautiful or amazing.
- breechloader — any gun loaded at the breech
- breuer chair — a chair with a frame of continuous chrome tubing, no back legs, and cane seat and back
- bridge chair — a lightweight folding chair, often part of a set of matching chairs and bridge table.
- brigham city — a city in N Utah.
- bright spark — If you say that some bright spark had a particular idea or did something, you mean that their idea or action was clever, or that it seemed clever but was silly in some way.
- brinkmanship — Brinkmanship is a method of behaviour, especially in politics, in which you deliberately get into dangerous situations which could result in disaster but which could also bring success.
- british rail — the organization that ran the British railway system from 1948 until privatization in the mid-1990s
- british warm — an army officer's short thick overcoat
- broad church — You can refer to an organization, group, or area of activity as a broad church when it includes a wide range of opinions, beliefs, or styles.
- brochureware — (jargon, business) A planned, but non-existent, product, like vaporware but with the added implication that marketing is actively selling and promoting it (they've printed brochures). Brochureware is often deployed to con customers into not committing to a competing existing product. The term is now especially applicable to new websites, website revisions, and ancillary services such as customer support and product return. Owing to the explosion of database-driven, cookie-using dot-coms (of the sort that can now deduce that you are, in fact, a dog), the term is now also used to describe sites made up of static HTML pages that contain not much more than contact info and mission statements. The term suggests that the company is small, irrelevant to the web, local in scope, clueless, broke, just starting out, or some combination thereof. Many new companies without product, funding, or even staff, post brochureware with investor info and press releases to help publicise their ventures. As of December 1999, examples include pop.com and cdradio.com. Small-timers that really have no business on the web such as lawncare companies and divorce laywers inexplicably have brochureware made that stays unchanged for years.
- broken heart — If you say that someone has a broken heart, you mean that they are very sad, for example because a love affair has ended unhappily.
- bromomethane — methyl bromide.