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16-letter words containing o, b, s, t

  • beside the point — If you say that something is beside the point, you mean that it is not relevant to the subject that you are discussing.
  • best-before date — a date on packaged food indicating how long it is safe to keep it
  • beta abstraction — [lambda-calculus] The conversion of an expression to an application of a lambda abstraction to an argument expression. Some subterm of the original expression becomes the argument of the abstraction and the rest becomes its body. E.g. 4+1 --> (\ x . x+1) 4 The opposite of beta abstraction is beta reduction. These are the two kinds of beta conversion.
  • bicapitalisation — The act said to have been performed on trademarks (such as PostScript, NeXT, NeWS, VisiCalc, FrameMaker, TK!solver, EasyWriter) that have been raised above the ruck of common coinage by nonstandard capitalisation. Too many marketroid types think this sort of thing is really cute, even the 2,317th time they do it. Compare studlycaps.
  • binet-simon test — an intelligence test that consists of questions, problems, and things to do, graded in terms of mental age
  • biometeorologist — the scientific study of the effects of natural or artificial atmospheric conditions, as temperature and humidity, on living organisms.
  • bird's-nest soup — a rich spicy Chinese soup made from the outer part of the nests of SE Asian swifts of the genus Collocalia
  • birthday honours — (in Britain) honorary titles conferred on the official birthday of the sovereign
  • bite one's nails — to chew off the ends of one's fingernails
  • bleeder resistor — a resistor connected across the output terminals of a power supply in order to improve voltage regulation and to discharge filter capacitors
  • block-structured — (language)   Any programming language in which sections of source code contained within pairs of matching delimiters such as "" and "" (e.g. in C) or "begin" and "end" (e.g. Algol) are executed as a single unit. A block of code may be the body of a subroutine or function, or it may be controlled by conditional execution (if statement) or repeated execution (while statement, for statement, etc.). In all but the most primitive block structured languages a variable's scope can be limited to the block in which it is declared. Block-structured languages support structured programming where each block can be written without detailed knowledge of the inner workings of other blocks, thus allowing a top-down design approach. See also abstract data type, module.
  • blood substitute — a substance such as plasma, albumin, or dextran, used to replace lost blood or increase the blood volume
  • blow one's stack — to lose one's temper; fly into a rage
  • blow the whistle — to inform (on)
  • boatswain's mate — a job classification in the US navy
  • boatswain's pipe — a whistle used formerly to give orders on board ship
  • bodily functions — physical processes such as urination and defecation
  • bonneville flats — an area of salt flats in the W part of Great Salt Lake Desert, in NW Utah: site of automobile speed tests.
  • bootstrap loader — (operating system)   A short program loaded from non-volatile storage and used to bootstrap a computer. On early computers great efforts were expended on making the bootstrap loader short, in order to make it easy to toggle in via the front panel switches. It was just clever enough to read in a slightly more complex program (usually from punched cards or paper tape), to which it handed control. This program in turn read the application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk drive. Thus, in successive steps, the computer "pulled itself up by its bootstraps" to a useful operating state. Nowadays the bootstrap loader is usually found in ROM or EPROM, and reads the first stage in from a fixed location on the disk, called the "boot block". When this program gains control, it is powerful enough to load the actual OS and hand control over to it. A diskless workstation can use bootp to load its OS from the network.
  • bootstrap memory — memory that allows new programs to be entered because some simple preliminary instructions or information are already built in.
  • border leicester — a breed of sheep originally developed in the border country between Scotland and England by crossing English Leicesters with Cheviots: large numbers in Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand. It has a long white fleece with no wool on the head
  • boston cream pie — a cake of two layers with icing and a creamy filling
  • boston tea party — a raid in 1773 made by citizens of Boston (disguised as Indians) on three British ships in the harbour as a protest against taxes on tea and the monopoly given to the East India Company. The contents of several hundred chests of tea were dumped into the harbour
  • boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
  • bouquet larkspur — a plant, Delphinium grandiflorum, of eastern Asia, having blue or whitish flowers and hairy fruit.
  • bracknell forest — a unitary authority in SE England, in E Berkshire. Pop: 110 100 (2003 est). Area: 109 sq km (42 sq miles)
  • branchiopneustic — breathing by means of gills, as certain aquatic insect larvae.
  • break one's fast — to eat food for the first time after fasting, or for the first time in the day
  • bring sb to book — If you bring someone to book, you punish them for an offence or make them explain their behaviour officially.
  • bring sb to heel — If you bring someone to heel, you force them to obey you.
  • bring to justice — to capture, try, and usually punish (a criminal, an outlaw, etc)
  • bristlecone pine — a coniferous tree, Pinus aristata, of the western US, bearing cones with bristle-like prickles: one of the longest-lived trees, useful in radiocarbon dating
  • british columbia — a province of W Canada, on the Pacific coast: largely mountainous with extensive forests, rich mineral resources, and important fisheries. Capital: Victoria. Pop: 4 400 057 (2011 est). Area: 930 532 sq km (359 279 sq miles)
  • british honduras — Belize
  • british longhair — a breed of large cat with a semi-long thick soft coat
  • bronchial asthma — asthma.
  • brood parasitism — a type of parasitism in which a bird (brood parasite), as a cowbird or European cuckoo, lays and abandons its eggs in the nest of another species
  • broomstick skirt — a full, gathered or pleated skirt that has characteristic tiny creases obtained by wetting the skirt and winding it around a broomstick to dry.
  • brothel-creepers — soft-soled men's shoes that were originally popular in the 1950s
  • brown house moth — a species of micro moth, Hofmannophila pseudospretella, which, although it usually inhabits birds' nests, sometimes enters houses where its larvae can be very destructive of stored fabrics and foodstuffs
  • building society — In Britain, a building society is a business which will lend you money when you want to buy a house. You can also invest money in a building society, where it will earn interest. Compare savings and loan association.
  • bulletproof vest — a protective garment
  • bundled software — software sold as part of a package with computers or other hardware or software
  • burn oneself out — to undergo rapid combustion or consume fuel in such a way as to give off heat, gases, and, usually, light; be on fire: The fire burned in the grate.
  • burning question — urgent matter for discussion
  • business account — a bank account or type of bank account used for business transactions rather than personal ones
  • bust one's chops — Usually, chops. the jaw.
  • butterfly stroke — a swimming stroke in which the arms are plunged forward together in large circular movements
  • button one's lip — to stop talking: often imperative
  • button snakeroot — blazing star (sense 1)
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