14-letter words containing l, i, t, s
- biostatistical — relating to biostatistics
- bipolarisation — the act of bipolarising
- 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
- 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.
- black as night — totally dark
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- block capitals — Block capitals are simple capital letters that are not decorated in any way.
- blood boosting — a procedure in which an athlete is injected with erythropoietin, his or her own blood, or the blood of a family member prior to competition, purportedly increasing the blood's oxygen-carrying capacity as a result of the addition of red blood cells.
- blue mountains — a mountain range in the US, in NE Oregon and SE Washington. Highest peak: Rock Creek Butte, 2773 m (9097 ft)
- bolshoi ballet — a ballet company founded in Moscow in 1776.
- bosworth field — the site, two miles south of Market Bosworth in Leicestershire, of the battle that ended the Wars of the Roses (August 1485). Richard III was killed and Henry Tudor was crowned king as Henry VII
- bottomless pit — If you describe a supply of something as bottomless, you mean that it seems so large that it will never run out.
- boy-meets-girl — conventionally or trivially romantic
- branchiostegal — of or relating to the operculum covering the gill slits of fish
- breast implant — an object such as a sachet filled with gel introduced surgically into a woman's breast to enlarge it
- british dollar — any of several coins formerly issued by the British Empire for use in certain territories, as the Straits dollar or the Hong Kong dollar.
- british legion — (in Britain) a national social club for veterans of the armed forces.
- british malaya — a comprehensive term for the former British possessions on the Malay Peninsula and the Malay Archipelago: now part of Malaysia.
- builder's knot — clove hitch
- butterfly fish — any small tropical marine percoid fish of the genera Chaetodon, Chelmon, etc, that has a deep flattened brightly coloured or strikingly marked body and brushlike teeth: family Chaetodontidae
- buttermilk sky — a cloudy sky resembling the mottled or clabbered appearance of buttermilk.
- c with classes — Short-lived predecessor to C++.
- cabalistically — In a cabalistic manner.
- canada thistle — a prickly European weed (Cirsium arvense) of the composite family, with heads of purplish flowers and wavy leaves: now common as a fast-spreading, injurious weed throughout the N U.S.
- capital assets — any assets, tangible or intangible, that are held for long-term investment
- capitalisation — The act or process of capitalising.
- captain's walk — widow's walk
- caramelisation — (chiefly British) alternative spelling of caramelization.
- carpet slipper — Carpet slippers are soft, comfortable slippers.
- catachrestical — Catachrestic.
- catastrophical — of the nature of a catastrophe, or disastrous event; calamitous: a catastrophic failure of the dam.
- cavalier poets — a group of mid-17th-century English lyric poets, mostly courtiers of Charles I. Chief among them were Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, and Richard Lovelace
- celestial body — an object visible in the sky, such as a planet
- celestial city — the goal of Christian's journey in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress; the heavenly Jerusalem.
- celestial pole — either of the two points at which the earth's axis, extended to infinity, would intersect the celestial sphere
- centralisation — Alternative spelling of centralization.
- centripetalism — the movement of things towards a centre