15-letter words containing h, a, b
- blackberry bush — a bush on which blackberries grow
- blackwall hitch — a knot for hooking tackle to the end of a rope, holding fast when pulled but otherwise loose
- blagoveshchensk — a city and port in E Russia, in Siberia on the Amur River. Pop: 222 000 (2005 est)
- blasphemousness — the quality of being blasphemous
- blenheim orange — a type of apple tree bearing gold-coloured apples
- blenheim palace — a palace in Woodstock in Oxfordshire: built (1705–22) by Sir John Vanbrugh for the 1st Duke of Marlborough as a reward from the nation for his victory at Blenheim; gardens laid out by Henry Wise and Capability Brown; birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill (1874)
- board of health — an agency with responsibility for health in state, country, etc
- boarding school — A boarding school is a school which some or all of the pupils live in during the school term. Compare day school.
- boating holiday — a holiday spent sailing or travelling in a canal boat, cruiser, etc
- bohemia-moravia — a former German protectorate including Bohemia and Moravia, 1939–45.
- bohemian forest — a mountain range between the SW Czech Republic and SE Germany. Highest peak: Arber, 1457 m (4780 ft)
- boil-in-the-bag — (of food) able to be boiled in a sealed bag until ready to eat
- book of changes — an ancient Chinese book of divination, in which 64 pairs of trigrams are shown with various interpretations.
- box the compass — to name the compass points in order
- brachial plexus — a network of nerves in the armpits and neck, innervating the shoulders, arms, and hands.
- brachiocephalic — of, relating to, or supplying the arm and head
- brachistochrone — the curve between two points through which a body moves under the force of gravity in a shorter time than for any other curve; the path of quickest descent
- brachystomatous — having a short proboscis, as certain insects.
- bragging rights — notional privileges that are gained by defeating a close rival
- brake parachute — a parachute attached to the rear of a vehicle and opened to assist braking
- branch and hang — (humour) (BRH) Originally a mythical instruction for the IBM 1130 at Indiana University. Later some real examples were discovered. The Texas Instruments TI-980 allowed all addressing modes with all instructions, including Store Immediate Extended (stores the value into the extension word of the instruction) and Branch and Link Immediate (makes a subroutine call to the same instruction -- Branch and Hang). Compare HCF.
- branchial cleft — Zoology. one of a series of slitlike openings in the walls of the pharynx between the branchial arches of fishes and aquatic amphibians through which water passes from the pharynx to the exterior.
- branchial pouch — one of a series of rudimentary outcroppings of the inner pharyngeal wall, corresponding to the branchial grooves on the surface.
- branching rules — rules that are used to break down a complex problem into several smaller problems
- branchiostegous — branchiostegal.
- breach of faith — a violation of good faith, confidence, or trust; betrayal: To abandon your friends now would be a breach of faith.
- breach of trust — a violation of duty by a trustee or any other person in a fiduciary position
- bread and honey — money
- 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.
- breakeven chart — a graph measuring the value of an enterprise's revenue and costs against some index of its activity, such as percentage capacity. The intersection of the total revenue and total cost curves gives the breakeven point
- breaking plough — a plough with a long shallow mouldboard for turning virgin land or sod land
- breath analyzer — an instrument consisting of a small bag or tube filled with chemically treated crystals, into which a sample of a motorist's breath is taken as a test for intoxication.
- breathing space — A breathing space is a short period of time between two activities in which you can recover from the first activity and prepare for the second one.
- brights-disease — a disease characterized by albuminuria and heightened blood pressure.
- bring to a head — to bring or be brought to a crisis
- bristol channel — an inlet of the Atlantic, between S Wales and SW England, merging into the Severn estuary. Length: about 137 km (85 miles)
- bristol fashion — clean and neat, with newly painted and scrubbed surfaces, brass polished, etc
- british america — British North America.
- british library — the British national library, formed in 1973 from the British Museum library and other national collections: housed mainly in the British Museum until 1997 when a purpose-built library in St Pancras, London, was completed
- broca's aphasia — a type of aphasia caused by a lesion in Broca's area of the brain, characterized by misarticulated speech and lack of grammatical morphemes.
- brompheniramine — a substance, C 16 H 19 BrN 2 , used as an antihistamine in the management of various allergies, as hay fever.
- bronchial tubes — the bronchi or their smaller divisions
- brother-in-arms — a fellow soldier or comrade in a shared struggle
- brown-tail moth — a white moth, Nygmia phaerrhoea, having a brown tuft at the end of the abdomen, the larvae of which feed on the foliage of various shade and fruit trees.
- 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
- brushback pitch — a fast ball deliberately thrown at or too near a batter's head
- buckinghamshire — a county in SE central England, containing the Vale of Aylesbury and parts of the Chiltern Hills: the geographic and ceremonial county includes Milton Keynes, which became an independent unitary authority in 1997. Administrative centre: Aylesbury. Pop (excluding Milton Keynes): 478 000 (2003 est). Area (excluding Milton Keynes): 1568 sq km (605 sq miles)
- bughouse square — Informal. any intersection or park mall in a big city where political zealots, agitators, folk evangelists, etc., congregate to argue and make soapbox speeches.
- 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.