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21-letter words containing l, e

  • biobehavioral science — any of the various branches of the life sciences, as neurobiology, neurochemistry, or neuroendocrinology, that deal with biological aspects of behavior.
  • black-and-tan terrier — Manchester terrier
  • black-headed fireworm — the larva of any of several moths, as Rhopobota naevana (black-headed fireworm) which feeds on the leaves of cranberries and causes them to wither.
  • blackburn with darwen — a unitary authority in NW England, in Lancashire. Pop: 139 800 (2003 est). Area: 137 sq km (53 sq miles)
  • blot on the landscape — If you describe something such as a building as a blot on the landscape, you mean that you think it is very ugly and spoils an otherwise attractive place.
  • blow one's brains out — to kill oneself by shooting oneself in the head
  • blow the whistle (on) — to report or inform (on)
  • blow your own trumpet — If you blow your own trumpet or blow your own horn, you tell people that you are very clever or successful.
  • bluethroat pikeblenny — See under pikeblenny.
  • boiling-water reactor — a nuclear reactor using water as coolant and moderator, steam being produced in the reactor itself: enriched uranium oxide cased in zirconium is the fuel
  • bonnie prince charlie — a member of the royal family that ruled in Scotland from 1371 to 1714 and in England from 1603 to 1714.
  • bottlebrush moustache — a short, bristly moustache
  • bow to the inevitable — If someone bows to the inevitable and does something that they do not want to do, they do it, because circumstances force them to do it.
  • brazilian firecracker — a tropical American twining plant, Manettia inflata, of the madder family, having opposite, lance-shaped leaves and a red, tubular flower with yellow tips, grown in the southern U.S. as a trellis plant.
  • brazilian pepper tree — a small Brazilian evergreen tree or shrub, Schinus terebinthifolius, of the cashew family, having inconspicuous white flowers and bright red fruit: the berries are used for Christmas decorations.
  • break the fourth wall — (esp of a character in a television programme, film, or play) to refer to, acknowledge, or address the audience, usually for comedic effect or as an avante-garde technique
  • breakthrough bleeding — bleeding from the uterus that occurs between menstrual periods
  • breath-of-life packet — (XEROX PARC) An Ethernet packet that contains bootstrap code, periodically sent out from a working computer to infuse the "breath of life" into any computer on the network that has crashed. Computers depending on such packets have sufficient hardware or firmware code to wait for (or request) such a packet during the reboot process. See also dickless workstation. The notional "kiss-of-death packet", with a function complementary to that of a breath-of-life packet, is recommended for dealing with hosts that consume too many network resources. Though "kiss-of-death packet" is usually used in jest, there is at least one documented instance of an Internet subnet with limited address-table slots in a gateway computer in which such packets were routinely used to compete for slots, rather like Christmas shoppers competing for scarce parking spaces.
  • british anti-lewisite — a colorless, oily, viscous liquid, C 3 H 8 OS 2 , originally developed as an antidote to lewisite and now used in treating bismuth, gold, mercury, and arsenic poisoning.
  • british sign language — the main sign language used by deaf people in the United Kingdom
  • broadleaved whitebeam — a whitebeam, Sorbus latifolia, widely found in France and England, also planted as an ornamental
  • bromine pentafluoride — a colorless, corrosive liquid, BrF 5 , used as an oxidizer in liquid rocket propellants.
  • buffalo carpet beetle — any of several small beetles of the family Dermestidae, the larvae of which are household pests, feeding on rugs and other woolen fabrics, especially Anthrenus scrophulariae (buffalo carpet beetle) and Attagenus piceus (black carpet beetle)
  • built-in obsolescence — a method of stimulating consumer demand by designing products that wear out or become outmoded after limited use.
  • bulletin board system — (communications, application)   (BBS, bboard /bee'bord/, message board, forum; plural: BBSes) A computer and associated software which typically provides an electronic message database where people can log in and leave messages. Messages are typically split into topic groups similar to the newsgroups on Usenet (which is like a distributed BBS). Any user may submit or read any message in these public areas. The term comes from physical pieces of board on which people can pin messages written on paper for general consumption - a "physical bulletin board". Ward Christensen, the programmer and operator of the first BBS (on-line 1978-02-16) called it a CBBS for "computer bulletin board system". Since the rise of the World-Wide Web, the term has become antiquated, though the concept is more popular than ever, with many websites featuring discussion areas where users can post messages for public consumption. Apart from public message areas, some BBSes provided archives of files, personal electronic mail and other services of interest to the system operator (sysop). Thousands of BBSes around the world were run from amateurs' homes on MS-DOS boxes with a single modem line each. Although BBSes were traditionally the domain of hobbyists, many connected directly to the Internet (accessed via telnet), others were operated by government, educational, and research institutions. Fans of Usenet or the big commercial time-sharing bboards such as CompuServe, CIX and GEnie tended to consider local BBSes the low-rent district of the hacker culture, but they helped connect hackers and users in the personal-micro and let them exchange code. Use of this term for a Usenet newsgroup generally marks one either as a newbie fresh in from the BBS world or as a real old-timer predating Usenet.
  • burn the midnight oil — to work or study late into the night
  • business intelligence — the methods and technologies that gather, store, report, and analyze business data to help people make business decisions: business intelligence software; business intelligence tools.
  • businessman's holiday — busman's holiday.
  • butterfly common lisp — A parallel version of Common LISP for the BBN Butterfly computer.
  • button up (one's lip) — to refrain from talking; esp., to keep a secret
  • by fair means or foul — If someone tries to achieve something by fair means or foul, they use every means possible in order to achieve it, and they do not care if their behaviour is dishonest or unfair.
  • cancellation deadline — A cancellation deadline is a date before which you must cancel a hotel reservation without paying any money.
  • canticle of canticles — another name for the Song of Solomon, used in the Douay Bible
  • cantilever foundation — a building foundation supporting its load partly or wholly upon cantilevers.
  • carlos saavedra lamas — Carlos [kahr-laws] /ˈkɑr lɔs/ (Show IPA), 1878?–1959, Argentine statesman and diplomat: Nobel Peace Prize 1936.
  • caroline of brunswick — 1768–1821, wife of George IV of the United Kingdom: tried for adultery (1820)
  • carrie chapman l catt — Carrie Chapman Lane, 1859–1947, U.S. leader in women's suffrage movements.
  • cascading style sheet — a file recording style details, such as fonts, colours, etc, that is read by browsers so that style is consistent over multiple web pages
  • castellon de la plana — a port in E Spain. Pop: 160 714 (2003 est)
  • catch one flat footed — having flatfeet.
  • caviar to the general — a thing appealing only to a highly cultivated taste: Hamlet II, ii
  • central daylight time — the time observed in the Central Time Zone of the United states when Daylight Savings Time is in effect; GMT -5
  • central european time — the standard time adopted by Western European countries one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, corresponding to British Summer Time
  • central limit theorem — any of several theorems stating that the sum of a number of random variables obeying certain conditions will assume a normal distribution as the number of variables becomes large.
  • central standard time — one of the standard times used in North America, based on the local time of the 90° meridian, six hours behind Greenwich Mean Time
  • character development — the portrayal of people in a work of fiction in such a way that the reader or audience seems to learn more about them as they develop
  • charge-coupled device — an electronic device, used in imaging and signal processing, in which information is represented as packets of electric charge that are stored in an array of tiny closely spaced capacitors and can be moved from one capacitor to another in a controlled way
  • charles edward stuart — a member of the royal family that ruled in Scotland from 1371 to 1714 and in England from 1603 to 1714.
  • chequebook journalism — Chequebook journalism is the practice of paying people large sums of money for information about crimes or famous people in order to get material for newspaper articles.
  • child-directed speech — baby talk (def 2).
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