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14-letter words containing i

  • bioremediation — the use of plants to extract heavy metals from contaminated soils and water
  • biostatistical — relating to biostatistics
  • biosystematics — the study of the variation and evolution of a population of organisms in relation to their taxonomic classification
  • biosystematist — someone who studies or works professionally in the field of biosystematics
  • bipartisanship — representing, characterized by, or including members from two parties or factions: Government leaders hope to achieve a bipartisan foreign policy.
  • bipolarisation — the act of bipolarising
  • bipolarization — the action of rendering something bipolar
  • bircher muesli — a type of muesli containing softened oats, dried fruit, and apple
  • bird sanctuary — an area of land in which birds are protected and encouraged to breed
  • birdcage clock — lantern clock.
  • birds and bees — any warm-blooded vertebrate of the class Aves, having a body covered with feathers, forelimbs modified into wings, scaly legs, a beak, and no teeth, and bearing young in a hard-shelled egg.
  • birthday party — a party to celebrate someone's birthday
  • birthing chair — a chair constructed to allow a woman in labour to give birth in a sitting position
  • birthing stool — a stool constructed to allow a woman in labour to give birth in a sitting position
  • biscuit barrel — an airtight container of circular section equipped with a lid and used for storing biscuits
  • biscuit-firing — the first firing given to pottery, before it is glazed
  • bishop's mitre — a European heteropterous bug, Aelia acuminata, whose larvae are a pest of cereal grasses: family Pentatomidae
  • bishops' bible — an English translation of the Bible made under the direction of Matthew Parker and published in 1568: the recognized translation of the Bible in England until the Authorized (King James) Version of 1611.
  • bisphosphonate — any drug of a class that inhibits the resorption of bone; used in treating certain bone disorders, esp osteoporosis
  • bit error rate — A bit error rate is the measure of the number of incorrect bits that can be expected in a specified number of bits in a serial stream.
  • bite one's lip — If you bite your lip or your tongue, you stop yourself from saying something that you want to say, because it would be the wrong thing to say in the circumstances.
  • bitmap display — (hardware)   A computer output device where each pixel displayed on the monitor screen corresponds directly to one or more bits in the computer's video memory. Such a display can be updated extremely rapidly since changing a pixel involves only a single processor write to memory compared with a terminal or VDU connected via a serial line where the speed of the serial line limits the speed at which the display can be changed. Most modern personal computers and workstations have bitmap displays, allowing the efficient use of graphical user interfaces, interactive graphics and a choice of on-screen fonts. Some more expensive systems still delegate graphics operations to dedicated hardware such as graphics accelerators. The bitmap display might be traced back to the earliest days of computing when the Manchester University Mark I(?) computer, developed by F.C. Williams and T. Kilburn shortly after the Second World War. This used a storage tube as its working memory. Phosphor dots were used to store single bits of data which could be read by the user and interpreted as binary numbers.
  • bits per pixel — (hardware, graphics)   (bpp) The number of bits of information stored per pixel of an image or displayed by a graphics adapter. The more bits there are, the more colours can be represented, but the more memory is required to store or display the image. A colour can be described by the intensities of red, green and blue (RGB) components. Allowing 8 bits (1 byte) per component (24 bits per pixel) gives 256 levels for each component and over 16 million different colours - more than the human eye can distinguish. Microsoft Windows [and others?] calls this truecolour. An image of 1024x768 with 24 bpp requires over 2 MB of memory. "High colour" uses 16 bpp (or 15 bpp), 5 bits for blue, 5 bits for red and 6 bits for green. This reduced colour precision gives a slight loss of image quality at a 1/3 saving on memory. Standard VGA uses a palette of 16 colours (4 bpp), each colour in the palette is 24 bit. Standard SVGA uses a palette of 256 colours (8 bpp). Some graphics hardware and software support 32-bit colour depths, including an 8-bit "alpha channel" for transparency effects.
  • bitter cassava — a species of cassava (Manihot esculenta) whose poisonous roots when processed yield tapioca starch
  • black as night — totally dark
  • black bindweed — a twining polygonaceous European plant, Polygonum convolvulus, with heart-shaped leaves and triangular black seed pods
  • black blizzard — a dust storm.
  • black diamonds — carbonado1 .
  • black selenium — an allotropic form of selenium occurring as a black, amorphous, water-insoluble, light-sensitive powder: used chiefly in photoelectric cells.
  • black skipjack — a small spotted tuna, Euthynnus yaito, of Indo-Pacific seas
  • black squirrel — a fox squirrel or gray squirrel in that color phase in which the fur is black.
  • blacktip shark — a widely distributed sand shark, Charcharinus limbatus, having fins that appear to have been dipped in ink, inhabiting shallow waters of warm seas.
  • bladder ketmia — plant with pale yellow flowers
  • bladder ketmie — flower-of-an-hour
  • blade-shearing — the shearing of sheep using hand shears
  • blanket finish — a finish so close that a blanket would cover all the contestants involved
  • blanket stitch — a strong reinforcing stitch for the edges of blankets and other thick material
  • blanket-stitch — a basic sewing stitch in which widely spaced, interlocking loops, or purls, are formed, used for cutwork, as a decorative finish for edges, etc.
  • blantyre-limbe — a city in S Malawi: largest city in the country; formed in 1956 from the adjoining towns of Blantyre and Limbe. Pop: 647 000 (2005 est)
  • blaxploitation — a genre of films featuring Black stereotypes
  • bleeding heart — If you describe someone as a bleeding heart, you are criticizing them for being sympathetic towards people who are poor and suffering, without doing anything practical to help.
  • blended family — a social unit consisting of two previously married parents and the children of their former marriages
  • blessed virgin — the Virgin Mary
  • blind as a bat — having extremely poor eyesight
  • blind register — (in the United Kingdom) a list of those who are blind and are therefore entitled to financial and other benefits
  • blind staggers — the staggers
  • blind stamping — an impression on a book cover without using colour or gold leaf
  • blister beetle — any beetle of the family Meloidae, many of which produce a secretion that blisters the skin
  • blister copper — an impure form of copper having a blister-like surface due to the release of gas during cooling
  • blister-packed — presented in a blister pack
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