14-letter words containing p, e
- bible-thumping — an evangelist or other person who quotes the Bible frequently, especially as a means of exhortation or rebuke.
- biceps brachii — See under biceps.
- biceps femoris — See under biceps.
- bicuspid valve — mitral valve
- bidding prayer — the formal petitionary prayer, said especially in the Anglican Church immediately before the sermon.
- binary package — (software) An archive file that contains all files and directories that must be installed in order to make a working installation of the program(s) included in the package, and the maintainer scripts necessary for the installation. A binary package is usually specific to a certain platform, in contrast to a source package.
- bioprospecting — searching for plant or animal species for use as a source of commercially exploitable products, such as medicinal drugs
- bishop's mitre — a European heteropterous bug, Aelia acuminata, whose larvae are a pest of cereal grasses: family Pentatomidae
- bishops' bible — an English translation of the Bible made under the direction of Matthew Parker and published in 1568: the recognized translation of the Bible in England until the Authorized (King James) Version of 1611.
- bisphosphonate — any drug of a class that inhibits the resorption of bone; used in treating certain bone disorders, esp osteoporosis
- 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.
- 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-eyed pea — Black-eyed peas are beige seeds with black marks that are eaten as a vegetable. They are from a plant called the cowpea.
- blepharoplasty — cosmetic surgery performed on the eyelid
- bletchley park — the Buckinghamshire estate which was the centre of British code-breaking operations during World War II
- 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 platelet — any of the minute, disklike, colorless elements of the blood that are essential for normal clotting
- 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
- blotting paper — Blotting paper is thick soft paper that you use for soaking up and drying ink on a piece of paper.
- blow one's top — to lose one's temper
- bodice-ripping — A bodice-ripping film or novel is one which is set in the past and which includes a lot of sex scenes. You use this word especially if you do not think it is very good and is just intended to entertain people.
- body corporate — a group of persons incorporated to carry out a specific enterprise
- bomb explosion — an explosion caused by the detonation of a bomb
- bone porcelain — bone china.
- border dispute — a disagreement between countries about where the border between them should be drawn
- bottomless pit — If you describe a supply of something as bottomless, you mean that it seems so large that it will never run out.
- bow and scrape — to behave in an excessively deferential or obsequious way
- bowstring hemp — a hemplike fibre obtained from the sansevieria
- brachycephalic — having a head nearly as broad from side to side as from front to back, esp one with a cephalic index over 80
- bread poultice — a poultice made from breadcrumbs
- break-up value — the value of an organization assuming that it will not continue to trade
- breaking point — If something or someone has reached breaking point, they have so many problems or difficulties that they can no longer cope with them, and may soon collapse or be unable to continue.
- breast implant — an object such as a sachet filled with gel introduced surgically into a woman's breast to enlarge it
- brewer's droop — an inability to get an erection because of excessive alcohol consumption
- bridge passage — bridge1 (def 7).
- briefing paper — a document providing relevant facts and information
- british empire — (formerly) the United Kingdom and the territories under its control, which reached its greatest extent at the end of World War I when it embraced over a quarter of the world's population and more than a quarter of the world's land surface
- britney spears — beers
- broad-spectrum — effective against a wide variety of diseases or microorganisms
- brood parasite — a young bird hatched and reared by birds of a different species as a result of brood parasitism.
- brownie points — a credit toward advancement or good standing gained especially by currying favor.
- bubble company — a company whose shares are highly valued and then plummet
- bubonic plague — Bubonic plague is a serious infectious disease spread by rats. It killed many people during the Middle Ages.
- budget surplus — the amount by which government income from taxation, customs duties, etc, exceeds expenditure in any one fiscal year
- bug-compatible — Said of a design or revision that has been badly compromised by a requirement to be compatible with fossils or misfeatures in other programs or (especially) previous releases of itself. "MS-DOS 2.0 used \ as a path separator to be bug-compatible with some cretin's choice of / as an option character in 1.0."
- building paper — any of various types of heavy-duty paper that usually consist of bitumen reinforced with fibre sandwiched between two sheets of kraft paper: used in damp-proofing or as insulation between the soil and a road surface
- bumper sticker — A bumper sticker is a small piece of paper or plastic with words or pictures on it, designed for sticking onto the back of your car. It usually has a political, religious, or humorous message.
- bungee jumping — If someone goes bungee jumping, they jump from a high place such as a bridge or cliff with a long piece of strong elastic cord tied around their ankle connecting them to the bridge or cliff.