14-letter words containing l, s, e, r
- bioelectronics — a branch of electronics that deals with electronic devices, implants, etc. used in medicine and biological research
- bioregionalism — the conviction that environmental and social policies should be determined by the bioregion rather than economics or politics
- bioregionalist — someone who believes in bioregionalism
- bircher muesli — a type of muesli containing softened oats, dried fruit, and apple
- biscuit barrel — an airtight container of circular section equipped with a lid and used for storing biscuits
- 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 panthers — (in the US) a militant Black political party founded in 1965 to end the political dominance of White people
- black redstart — a small, Passerine bird, Phoenicurus ochruros, found in Central and S Europe
- black squirrel — a fox squirrel or gray squirrel in that color phase in which the fur is black.
- blade-shearing — the shearing of sheep using hand shears
- blepharoplasty — cosmetic surgery performed on the eyelid
- blessed virgin — the Virgin Mary
- bletheranskate — a blatherer
- 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
- 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
- blood disorder — a medical condition affecting the blood
- blood pressure — the pressure exerted by the blood on the inner walls of the arteries, being relative to the elasticity and diameter of the vessels and the force of the heartbeat
- blue straggler — one of a small group of blue stars within a cluster that falls near the main sequence even though other stars of its color have evolved off the main sequence.
- blue-arsed fly — a blowfly; bluebottle
- blurred vision — a condition which makes it impossible to see clearly
- boolean search — (information science) (Or "Boolean query") A query using the Boolean operators, AND, OR, and NOT, and parentheses to construct a complex condition from simpler criteria. A typical example is searching for combinatons of keywords on a web search engine. Examples: car or automobile "New York" and not "New York state" The term is sometimes stretched to include searches using other operators, e.g. "near". Not to be confused with binary search. See also: weighted search.
- booster cables — jumper cables
- 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
- bouleversement — an overthrow or reversal; violent turmoil
- bowling crease — a line marked at the wicket, over which a bowler must not advance fully before delivering the ball
- boy-meets-girl — conventionally or trivially romantic
- branchiostegal — of or relating to the operculum covering the gill slits of fish
- bras d'or lake — an arm of the Atlantic Ocean in the center Cape Breton Island, in Nova Scotia, Canada. 360 sq. mi. (930 sq. km).
- brass knuckles — linked metal rings or a metal bar with holes for the fingers, worn for rough fighting
- brazing solder — an alloy of copper and zinc for joining two metal surfaces by melting the alloy so that it forms a thin layer between the surfaces
- breakfast club — a service that provides a breakfast for children who arrive early at school
- breast implant — an object such as a sachet filled with gel introduced surgically into a woman's breast to enlarge it
- bremsstrahlung — the radiation produced when an electrically charged particle, esp an electron, is slowed down by the electric field of an atomic nucleus or an atomic ion
- brewster's law — the law that light will receive maximum polarization from a reflecting surface when it is incident to the surface at an angle (angle of polarization or polarizing angle) having a tangent equal to the index of refraction of the surface.
- british legion — (in Britain) a national social club for veterans of the armed forces.
- budget surplus — the amount by which government income from taxation, customs duties, etc, exceeds expenditure in any one fiscal year
- builder's knot — clove hitch
- bull stretcher — Also called bullnose stretcher. a brick having one of the edges along its length rounded for laying as a stretcher in a sill or the like.
- bull's-eye rot — a disease of apples and pears, characterized by sunken, eyelike spots on the fruit and twig cankers, caused by any of several fungi, especially of the genus Neofabraea.
- burghley house — an Elizabethan mansion near Stamford in Lincolnshire: seat of the Cecil family; site of the annual Burghley Horse Trials
- bush telegraph — a means of communication between primitive peoples over large areas, as by drum beats
- business reply — a form of mail, as a postcard, letter, or envelope, usually sent as an enclosure, and which can be mailed back by respondents without their having to pay postage.
- butler's table — a small table, usually used as a coffee table, with a removable or fixed butler's tray for a top.
- butterfly bush — buddleia
- 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 power supply — a battery or other source of power for supplying a constant voltage bias to a control electrode of a vacuum tube.