15-letter words containing l, e, s
- beefsteak plant — an Asian plant, Perilla frutescens crispa, with aromatic red or green leaves which are used in cooking: family Lamiaceae
- beginner's luck — the initial good fortune or success commonly supposed to come to a person who has recently taken up a new pursuit, as a sport or game: Catching a large trout the first time you go fishing is simply beginner's luck.
- belief revision — (artificial intelligence) The area of theory change in which preservation of the information in the theory to be changed plays a key role. A fundamental issue in belief revision is how to decide what information to retract in order to maintain consistency, when the addition of a new belief to a theory would make it inconsistent. Usually, an ordering on the sentences of the theory is used to determine priorities among sentences, so that those with lower priority can be retracted. This ordering can be difficult to generate and maintain. The postulates of the AGM Theory for Belief Revision describe minimal properties a revision process should have.
- belt-and-braces — providing double security, in case one security measure should fail
- belted sandfish — a sea bass, Serranus subligarius, inhabiting warm, shallow waters of the western Atlantic Ocean.
- berkeley castle — a castle in Gloucestershire: scene of the murder of Edward II in 1327
- berkshire hills — region of wooded hills in W Mass.: resort area
- bessel function — one of several transcendental functions, usually represented as power series, that are solutions to a group of related differential equations.
- best-ball match — a match, scored by holes, in which one player competing against two or more others must score lower than the lowest scoring opponent to win a hole.
- bias (ply) tire — a motor vehicle tire having a foundation of plies of rubberized cords in a crisscross pattern of lines diagonal to the center line of the tread
- billings method — a natural method of birth control that involves examining the colour and viscosity of the cervical mucus to discover when ovulation is occurring
- binomial series — an infinite series obtained by expanding a binomial raised to a power that is not a positive integer.
- biodestructible — biodegradable
- bioluminescence — the production of light by living organisms as a result of the oxidation of a light-producing substance (luciferin) by the enzyme luciferase: occurs in many marine organisms, insects such as the firefly, etc
- biting housefly — a two-winged fly, Stomoxys calcitrans, having the mouthparts adapted for biting, and commonly a household and stable pest.
- black raspberry — a plant, Rubus occidentalis, of E North America, that has black berry-like fruits
- black sea bream — a sparid fish, Spondyliosoma cantharus, found in N Europe and the Mediterranean
- black september — a Palestinian Terrorist group, responsible for the assassinations of Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games at Munich in 1972
- black snakeroot — a tall bugbane, Cimicifuga racemosa, of the buttercup family, of eastern North America, having thin, tapering, toothed or deeply cut leaflets and branched clusters of small, white flowers.
- blackberry bush — a bush on which blackberries grow
- blagoveshchensk — a city and port in E Russia, in Siberia on the Amur River. Pop: 222 000 (2005 est)
- blanc de blancs — white wine, esp. champagne, made from white grapes
- blasphemousness — the quality of being blasphemous
- blast injection — the injection of liquid fuel directly into the cylinder of an internal-combustion engine using a blast of high-pressure air to atomize the spray of fuel
- blasting powder — a form of gunpowder made with sodium nitrate instead of saltpeter, used chiefly for blasting rock, ore, etc.
- blended whiskey — whiskey that is a blend of straight whiskey and neutral spirits or of two or more straight whiskeys
- blessed trinity — Trinity (def 1).
- blocked records — (storage) Several records written as a contiguous block on magnetic tape so that they may be accessed in a single I/O operation. Blocking increases the amount of data that may be stored on a tape because there are fewer inter-block gaps. It requires that the tape drive or processor have a sufficiently large buffer to store the whole block.
- blood corpuscle — one of the cells in the blood
- bloodguiltiness — guilty of murder or bloodshed.
- bloody butchers — a hardy plant, Trillium sessile, common from New York to Georgia and westward, having stalkless, purple or green flowers.
- blossom-end rot — a disease of tomato and pepper caused by a deficiency of calcium, characterized by decay at the blossom end of the fruit.
- blow one's cool — (of the wind or air) to be in motion.
- blow one's cork — to lose one's temper; become enraged
- blow one's horn — to boast about oneself; brag
- blow one's mind — (in a human or other conscious being) the element, part, substance, or process that reasons, thinks, feels, wills, perceives, judges, etc.: the processes of the human mind.
- 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
- blueback salmon — sockeye salmon.
- bluegrass state — Kentucky (used as a nickname).
- boiled dressing — a cooked salad dressing thickened with egg yolks and often containing mustard.
- boiled potatoes — potatoes, usually peeled, cooked in boiling water
- bologna sausage — a large smoked sausage made of seasoned mixed meats
- boom-bust cycle — A boom-bust cycle is a series of events in which a rapid increase in business activity in the economy is followed by a rapid decrease in business activity, and this process is repeated again and again.
- borderline case — a person or thing that is not clearly classifiable as something
- borough-english — (until 1925) a custom in certain English boroughs whereby the youngest son inherited land to the exclusion of his older brothers
- brachial plexus — a network of nerves in the armpits and neck, innervating the shoulders, arms, and hands.
- braille display — (hardware) (Or "refreshable braille display", "refreshable display") An electromechanical device that renders braille with tiny, independently controlled pins used to represent the state of dots in braille cells. Each pin, in its "on" state, raises above the top of its hole in the screen; in its "off" state, it drops below the top of its hole. Older systems used tiny solenoids to control the state of the pins; modern systems are piezoelectric. Typical dimensions of a braille display are 1 line of 40 cells, each cell of two-by-eight dots.
- branching rules — rules that are used to break down a complex problem into several smaller problems
- bravais lattice — any of 14 possible space lattices found in crystals