14-letter words containing p, s, e
- 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
- blepharoplasty — cosmetic surgery performed on the eyelid
- 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 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
- blow one's top — to lose one's temper
- bomb explosion — an explosion caused by the detonation of a bomb
- 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
- 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).
- 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.
- budget surplus — the amount by which government income from taxation, customs duties, etc, exceeds expenditure in any one fiscal year
- 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.
- bush carpenter — a rough-and-ready unskilled workman
- 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.
- businesspeople — a person regularly employed in business, especially a white-collar worker, executive, or owner.
- businessperson — Businesspeople are people who work in business.
- butcher's shop — a shop dedicated to the selling of meat
- c power supply — a battery or other source of power for supplying a constant voltage bias to a control electrode of a vacuum tube.
- c preprocessor — (tool, programming) (cpp) The standard Unix macro-expansion utility run as the first phase of the C compiler, cc. Cpp interprets lines beginning with "#" such as #define BUFFER_SIZE 256 as a textual assignment giving the symbol BUFFER_SIZE a value "256". Symbols defined with cpp are traditionally given upper case names to distinguish them from C identifiers. This symbol can be used later in the input, as in char input_buffer[BUFFER_SIZE]; This use of cpp to name constants, rather than writing these magic numbers inline, makes a program easier to read and maintain, especially if there is more than one occurrence of BUFFER_SIZE all of which must all have the same value. Cpp macros can have parameters: #define BIT(n) (1<<(n)) This can be used with any appropriate actual argument: msb = BIT(nbits-1); Note the parentheses around the "n" in the definition of BIT. Without these, operator precedence might mean that the expression substituted in place of n might not be interpreted correctly (though the example above would be OK). Cpp also supports conditional compilation with the use of #ifdef SYMBOL ... #else ... #endif and #if EXPR ... #else ... #endif constructs, where SYMBOL is a Cpp symbol which may or may not be defined and EXPR is an arithmetic expression involving only Cpp symbols, constants and C operators which Cpp can evaluate to a constant at compile time. The most widely used C preprocessor today is the GNU CPP, distributed as part of GCC.
- call-up papers — a letter containing order to report for service
- caller display — a facility which shows the number of an incoming call
- cambridge lisp — A flavour of Lisp using BCPL. Sources owned by Fitznorman partners.
- camelopardalis — a N constellation between Ursa Major and Cassiopeia; the Giraffe
- camp counselor — activities supervisor
- campaign chest — money collected and set aside for use in a campaign, especially a political one; a campaign fund.
- campanulaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Campanulaceae, a family of temperate and subtropical plants, including the campanulas, having bell-shaped nodding flowers
- campylobacters — Plural form of campylobacter.
- can't help sth — If you can't help the way you feel or behave, you cannot control it or stop it happening. You can also say that you can't help yourself.
- cape peninsula — (in South Africa) the peninsula and the part of the mainland on which Cape Town and most of its suburbs are located
- capital assets — any assets, tangible or intangible, that are held for long-term investment
- capparidaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Capparidaceae (or (Capparaceae), a family of plants, mostly shrubs including the caper, of warm tropical regions
- capriciousness — subject to, led by, or indicative of a sudden, odd notion or unpredictable change; erratic: He's such a capricious boss I never know how he'll react.
- carbon process — a photographic process for producing positive prints by exposing sensitized carbon tissue to light passing through a negative. Washing removes the unexposed gelatine leaving the pigmented image in the exposed insoluble gelatine
- carbro process — a process for making carbon or pigment prints on bromide paper without exposure to light.
- carpet slipper — Carpet slippers are soft, comfortable slippers.