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15-letter words containing o, b

  • break the mould — If you say that someone breaks the mould, you mean that they do completely different things from what has been done before or from what is usually done.
  • break-in period — a period during which certain restrictions or moderation in operating should be followed, as the avoidance of high speed, rapid acceleration, or severe braking for a new automobile.
  • break-out group — a group of people who detach themselves from a larger group or meeting in order to hold separate discussions
  • breakbone fever — dengue
  • breakdown cover — insurance cover against breakdowns in a vehicle
  • breakeven point — a point at which the total revenue and total cost are equal
  • breaking plough — a plough with a long shallow mouldboard for turning virgin land or sod land
  • breeder reactor — a type of nuclear reactor that produces more fissionable material than it consumes
  • breeding ground — If you refer to a situation or place as a breeding ground for something bad such as crime, you mean that this thing can easily develop in that situation or place.
  • breeding season — the time of year during which animals breed
  • bridge of sighs — a covered 16th-century bridge in Venice, between the Doges' Palace and the prisons, through which prisoners were formerly led to trial or execution
  • bring into line — a mark or stroke long in proportion to its breadth, made with a pen, pencil, tool, etc., on a surface: a line down the middle of the page.
  • bring to a head — to bring or be brought to a crisis
  • bristol channel — an inlet of the Atlantic, between S Wales and SW England, merging into the Severn estuary. Length: about 137 km (85 miles)
  • bristol fashion — clean and neat, with newly painted and scrubbed surfaces, brass polished, etc
  • british council — an organization founded (1934) to extend the influence of British culture and education throughout the world
  • british telecom — the popular name for British Telecommunications Group plc, the dominant fixed line telecommunications and broadband internet provider in the United Kingdom
  • britneyfication — the effect on clothes and fashions of following the revealing styles favoured by the US pop singer Britney Spears (born 1981)
  • broadcast storm — (networking)   A broadcast on a network that causes multiple hosts to respond by broadcasting themselves, causing the storm to grow exponentially in severity. See network meltdown.
  • broca's aphasia — a type of aphasia caused by a lesion in Broca's area of the brain, characterized by misarticulated speech and lack of grammatical morphemes.
  • brocken specter — an optical phenomenon sometimes occurring at high altitudes when the image of an observer placed between the sun and a cloud is projected on the cloud as a greatly magnified shadow.
  • broken pediment — a pediment, as over a doorway or window, having its raking cornice interrupted at the crown or apex.
  • bromoil process — a process for making an offset reproduction by first making a photographic print on paper with a silver bromide emulsion, wetting it, and then using it as a lithographic plate, the lighter parts of the emulsion tending to repel the oil base of the ink and the darker parts tending to hold it.
  • brompheniramine — a substance, C 16 H 19 BrN 2 , used as an antihistamine in the management of various allergies, as hay fever.
  • bronchial tubes — the bronchi or their smaller divisions
  • bronze diabetes — hemochromatosis.
  • bronzed grackle — the western subspecies of the American bird, the common grackle, Quiscalus quiscula versicolor, having bronzy, iridescent plumage.
  • bronzing powder — the powder used in bronzing, consisting of alloys of bronze or brass
  • brooklyn bridge — a suspension bridge over the East River, in New York City, connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn: built 1867–84. 5989 feet (1825 meters) long.
  • brooklyn center — a city in SE Minnesota, near Minneapolis.
  • brother-in-arms — a fellow soldier or comrade in a shared struggle
  • brown-and-serve — requiring only a brief period of browning, as in an oven, before being ready to serve: brown-and-serve rolls.
  • brown-tail moth — a white moth, Nygmia phaerrhoea, having a brown tuft at the end of the abdomen, the larvae of which feed on the foliage of various shade and fruit trees.
  • brownfield site — a disused site envisaged for redevelopment
  • brownian motion — the irregular motion of small particles suspended in a liquid or a gas, caused by the bombardment of the particles by molecules of the medium: first observed by Robert Brown in 1827.
  • brussels sprout — Brussels sprouts are vegetables that look like tiny cabbages.
  • bucket conveyor — a conveyor consisting of an endless chain with a series of buckets attached at regular intervals, used for moving ore, gravel, grain, or other bulk materials.
  • bucket elevator — a chain of buckets for raising liquids or materials to a higher level
  • buffalo currant — an ornamental shrub, Ribes odoratum, of the central U.S., having showy, drooping clusters of fragrant yellow flowers and edible black fruit.
  • buffalo soldier — (formerly, especially among American Indians) a black soldier.
  • buffer overflow — (programming)   What happens when you try to store more data in a buffer than it can handle. This may be due to a mismatch in the processing rates of the producing and consuming processes (see overrun and firehose syndrome), or because the buffer is simply too small to hold all the data that must accumulate before a piece of it can be processed. For example, in a text-processing tool that crunches a line at a time, a short line buffer can result in lossage as input from a long line overflows the buffer and overwrites data beyond it. Good defensive programming would check for overflow on each character and stop accepting data when the buffer is full. See also spam, overrun screw.
  • buffer solution — a solution to which a salt of a weak acid or base has been added
  • bughouse square — Informal. any intersection or park mall in a big city where political zealots, agitators, folk evangelists, etc., congregate to argue and make soapbox speeches.
  • building worker — a labourer, bricklayer, etc who works in the construction industry
  • bulimia nervosa — a disorder characterized by compulsive overeating followed by vomiting: sometimes associated with anxiety about gaining weight
  • bulldog edition — the early edition of a morning newspaper, chiefly for out-of-town distribution
  • bullnose header — bull header (def 1).
  • bullnose-header — Also called bullnose header. a brick having one of the edges across its width rounded for laying as a header in a sill or the like.
  • bullock's heart — the large, edible fruit of a tropical American tree, Annona reticulata.
  • bullock's-heart — the large, edible fruit of a tropical American tree, Annona reticulata.
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