14-letter words containing r, e, d, s
- at loggerheads — If two or more people or groups are at loggerheads, they disagree very strongly with each other.
- atacama desert — a desert region along the W coast of South America, mainly in N Chile: a major source of nitrates. Area: about 80 000 sq km (31 000 sq miles)
- audience share — the percentage of households with television sets in use or tuned to a particular station during a specific period of time.
- audio response — a computer response that is audible rather than textual or graphical
- austrian shade — a window shade in which the fabric falls in a series of puffy festoons created by vertical rows of shirring.
- autodestructed — Simple past tense and past participle of autodestruct.
- autoresponders — Plural form of autoresponder.
- axis-ordinates — y-axis (def 1).
- backside-front — backend-to.
- banker's draft — A banker's draft is the same as a bank draft.
- banker's order — pay order, banker's cheque
- barbados earth — a diatomaceous marl found in Barbados
- barbados pride — Also called bead tree. a tropical African and Asian tree, Adenanthera pavonina, of the legume family, having feathery foliage and bearing red seeds that are used in beadwork.
- barium sulfide — a gray or yellowish-green, water-soluble, poisonous powder, BaS, used chiefly as a depilatory and as an intermediate in the synthesis of pigments, especially lithopone.
- barrel-chested — A barrel-chested man has a large, rounded chest.
- barrier island — a long island, parallel to the coastline, formed from a ridge of sand (barrier beach) thrown up by the waves, that serves the shore as a protective barrier against tidal waves, storms, etc.
- bascule bridge — a kind of drawbridge counterweighted so that it can be raised and lowered easily
- bascule-bridge — a device operating like a balance or seesaw, especially an arrangement of a movable bridge (bascule bridge) by which the rising floor or section is counterbalanced by a weight.
- bastard ridley — ridley (def 1).
- bastard turtle — ridley (def 1).
- bastard-ridley — ridley (def 1).
- bastard-turtle — ridley (def 1).
- basting thread — inexpensive, loosely twisted thread that can be easily pulled out when permanent stitching is in place
- battle-scarred — adversely affected from the experience of battle, or some other traumatic experience
- be cursed with — to be afflicted with; suffer from
- beard-stroking — deep thought
- bedraggledness — The state or condition of being bedraggled.
- bedroom suburb — a commuter suburb, from which people travel to the city centre to work
- bedside manner — A doctor's bedside manner is the way in which they talk to their patients.
- bend the rules — to ignore rules or change them to suit one's own convenience
- benday process — a process for adding tone or shading, as in reproducing drawings, by the overlay on the plate of patterns, as of dots
- berberidaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Berberidaceae, a mainly N temperate family of flowering plants (mostly shrubs), including barberry and barrenwort
- berkner island — an island in Antarctica, in the S Weddell Sea, between the Ronne Ice Shelf and the Filchner Ice Shelf.
- bermuda shorts — close-fitting shorts that come down to the knees
- bewilderedness — the state of being bewildered
- beyond measure — If you say that something has changed or that it has affected you beyond measure, you are emphasizing that it has done this to a great extent.
- big red switch — (jargon) (BRS) IBM jargon for the power switch on a computer, especially the "Emergency Pull" switch on an IBM mainframe or the power switch on an IBM PC where it really is large and red. "This [email protected]%$% bitty box is hung again; time to hit the Big Red Switch." It is alleged that the emergency pull switch on an IBM 360/91 actually fired a non-conducting bolt into the main power feed; the BRSes on more recent mainframes physically drop a block into place so that they can't be pushed back in. People get fired for pulling them, especially inappropriately (see also molly-guard). Compare power cycle, three-finger salute, 120 reset; see also scram switch.
- bildungsromane — a type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist.
- binding strake — a very strong, heavy strake of planking, especially one next to a sheer strake.
- birds and bees — any warm-blooded vertebrate of the class Aves, having a body covered with feathers, forelimbs modified into wings, scaly legs, a beak, and no teeth, and bearing young in a hard-shelled egg.
- black redstart — a small, Passerine bird, Phoenicurus ochruros, found in Central and S Europe
- blade-shearing — the shearing of sheep using hand shears
- blessed virgin — the Virgin Mary
- blind register — (in the United Kingdom) a list of those who are blind and are therefore entitled to financial and other benefits
- blind staggers — the staggers
- blister-packed — presented in a blister pack
- blood disorder — a medical condition affecting the blood
- 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
- blue-arsed fly — a blowfly; bluebottle
- blurred vision — a condition which makes it impossible to see clearly