14-letter words containing m, s, b, a
- bethlehem sage — a plant, Pulmonaria saccharata, of the borage family, native to Europe, having mottled, white leaves and white or reddish-purple flowers in clusters.
- beyond measure — If you say that something has changed or that it has affected you beyond measure, you are emphasizing that it has done this to a great extent.
- bidialectalism — the state of being bidialectal
- bildungsromane — a type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist.
- billy no-mates — a person with no friends
- bioinformatics — the branch of information science concerned with large databases of biochemical or pharmaceutical information
- biomathematics — the study of the application of mathematics to biology
- bioregionalism — the conviction that environmental and social policies should be determined by the bioregion rather than economics or politics
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- blind stamping — an impression on a book cover without using colour or gold leaf
- block sampling — the selection of a corpus for statistical literary analysis by random selection of a starting point and consideration of the continuous passage following it
- blow off steam — water in the form of an invisible gas or vapor.
- blue mountains — a mountain range in the US, in NE Oregon and SE Washington. Highest peak: Rock Creek Butte, 2773 m (9097 ft)
- body mechanics — body exercises that are intended to improve one's posture, stamina, poise, etc.
- bounce message — A notification message returned to the sender by a site unable to relay e-mail to the intended recipient or the next link in a bang path. Reasons might include a nonexistent or misspelled user name or a down relay site. Bounce messages can themselves fail, with occasionally ugly results; see sorcerer's apprentice mode and software laser. The terms "bounce mail" and "barfmail" are also common.
- breakfast room — a room set aside for serving and eating breakfast, esp in a hotel or guesthouse
- breakfast time — Breakfast time is the period of the morning when most people have their breakfast.
- 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
- bring onstream — To bring onstream a plant, mine, oilfield, etc. is to start production there.
- british malaya — a comprehensive term for the former British possessions on the Malay Peninsula and the Malay Archipelago: now part of Malaysia.
- broad-spectrum — effective against a wide variety of diseases or microorganisms
- buyer's market — When there is a buyer's market for a particular product, there are more of the products for sale than there are people who want to buy them, so buyers have a lot of choice and can make prices come down.
- buyers' market — a market in which goods and services are plentiful and prices relatively low.
- calamine brass — an alloy of zinc carbonate and copper, formerly used to imitate gold.
- cambridge lisp — A flavour of Lisp using BCPL. Sources owned by Fitznorman partners.
- cambridgeshire — a county of E England, in East Anglia: includes the former counties of the Isle of Ely and Huntingdon and lies largely in the Fens: Peterborough became an independent unitary authority in 1998. Administrative centre: Cambridge. Pop (excluding Peterborough): 571 000 (2003 est). Area (excluding Peterborough): 3068 sq km (184 sq miles)
- camera obscura — a darkened chamber or small building in which images of outside objects are projected onto a flat surface by a convex lens in an aperture
- campylobacters — Plural form of campylobacter.
- chemical abuse — the habitual use of a mood-altering drug, alcoholic beverage, etc.
- chimney breast — A chimney breast is the part of a wall in a room which is built out round a chimney.
- cholera morbus — gastroenteritis
- christmas bush — any of various trees or shrubs flowering at Christmas and used for decoration
- christmas club — a savings account in a bank in which regular deposits are made, usually throughout one year, as to provide funds for Christmas shopping.
- christmasberry — toyon.
- coma berenices — a faint constellation in the N hemisphere between Ursa Major and Boötes containing the Coma Cluster a cluster of approximately 1000 galaxies, at a mean distance of 300 million light years
- combinableness — The quality or state of being combinable.
- comma bacillus — a comma-shaped bacterium, Vibrio comma, that causes cholera in man: family Spirillaceae
- commissionable — the act of committing or entrusting a person, group, etc., with supervisory power or authority.
- comparableness — The state or quality of being comparable; comparability.
- compassionable — exciting or deserving pity
- compatibilists — Plural form of compatibilist.
- compatibleness — The state or quality of being compatible.
- compensability — eligibility for compensation
- compostability — The quality of being compostable.
- cruciverbalism — the compilation of crosswords