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16-letter words containing p, t, e, r

  • at the sharp end — If you say that someone is at the sharp end of a particular activity or type of work, you mean that they are involved in the most difficult or dangerous aspects of it.
  • atmospheric tide — a movement of atmospheric masses caused by the gravitational attraction of the sun and moon and by daily solar heating.
  • attitude problem — a frame of mind perceived by others to be hostile or uncooperative
  • australopithecus — an extinct genus of small-brained,large-toothed bipedal hominids that lived in Africa between one and four million years ago.
  • autoethnographic — Using ethnographic techniques to describe one's own life, or events in which one is a participant.
  • automatic repeat — a key on the keyboard of a typewriter, computer, etc, which, when depressed continuously, produces the character repeatedly until the key is released
  • autostereoscopic — Of or pertaining to autostereoscopy.
  • aversion therapy — a method of suppressing an undesirable habit, such as excessive smoking, by causing the subject to associate an unpleasant effect, such as an electric shock or nausea, with the habit
  • avian diphtheria — a virus disease of chickens and other birds characterized by warty excrescences on the comb and wattles, and often by diphtherialike changes in the mucous membranes of the head.
  • axminster carpet — a type of patterned carpet with a cut pile
  • bacterioplankton — (biology) The bacterial component of marine plankton.
  • band-pass filter — a filter that transmits only those currents having a frequency lying within specified limits
  • bankruptcy order — a court order appointing a receiver to manage the property of a debtor or bankrupt
  • barbecue stopper — a controversial current-affairs issue
  • batch processing — manufacturing products or treating materials in batches, by passing the output of one process to subsequent processes
  • bathythermograph — a device for measuring the temperature of the ocean at any specific depth down to c. 1,800 m (c. 5,900 ft)
  • battery-operated — powered, driven, or operated with batteries
  • bayonet practice — drill in the use of a bayonet
  • bearing pedestal — an independent support for a bearing, usually incorporating a bearing housing
  • beauty therapist — a person whose job is to carry out treatments to improve a person's appearance, such as facials, manicures, removal of unwanted hair, etc
  • behavior pattern — a recurrent way of acting by an individual or group toward a given object or in a given situation.
  • behavior therapy — therapy employing behavior modification
  • bermuda palmetto — a palm, Sabal bermudana, of Bermuda, having small, roundish, black fruit and leaves that are checkered beneath.
  • bicyclic terpene — (originally) any of a class of monocyclic hydrocarbons of the formula C 10 H 16 , obtained from plants.
  • big picture, the — a long-range or overall view or account of some complex matter
  • bimetallic strip — a strip consisting of two metals of different coefficients of expansion welded together so that it buckles on heating: used in thermostats, etc
  • binary operation — a mathematical operation in which two elements are combined to yield a single result: Addition and multiplication are binary operations on the set of real numbers.
  • 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 present — a gift given to someone on their birthday
  • bitter principle — any of various bitter-tasting substances, such as aloin, usually extracted from plants
  • boolean-operator — any operation in which each of the operands and the result take one of two values.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • branchiopneustic — breathing by means of gills, as certain aquatic insect larvae.
  • brand acceptance — the extent to which consumers recognize and welcome a brand
  • break-even point — When a company reaches break-even point, the money it makes from the sale of goods or services is just enough to cover the cost of supplying those goods or services, but not enough to make a profit.
  • 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
  • brittany spaniel — a short-tailed French bird dog that typically has a smooth orange- or liver-and-white coat
  • broadloom carpet — any carpet woven on a wide loom and not having seams, especially one wider than 54 inches (137 cm).
  • brompton mixture — a mixture of narcotics, tranquilizers, and alcohol, used to kill pain for terminally ill patients
  • brothel-creepers — soft-soled men's shoes that were originally popular in the 1950s
  • bulletproof vest — a protective garment
  • bumper to bumper — If traffic is bumper to bumper, the vehicles are so close to one another that they are almost touching and are moving very slowly.
  • bumper-to-bumper — marked by a long line of cars moving slowly or with many stops and starts, one behind the other: bumper-to-bumper traffic.
  • buttercup family — the plant family Ranunculaceae, typified by mostly herbaceous plants having usually alternate leaves, multistaminate flowers sometimes lacking petals but with colorful sepals, and including the anemone, buttercup, clematis, columbine, delphinium, and monkshood.
  • buttercup squash — a small, usually dark-green squash that is a variety of Cucurbita maxima, having sweet orange flesh.
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