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16-letter words containing r, e, l

  • bermuda triangle — an area in the Atlantic Ocean bounded by Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Florida where ships and aeroplanes are alleged to have disappeared mysteriously
  • berners-lee, tim — Tim Berners-Lee
  • bernoulli effect — the decrease in pressure as the velocity of a fluid increases.
  • bertillon system — a system formerly in use for identifying persons, esp criminals, by means of a detailed record of physical characteristics
  • bertrand russell — (person)   (1872-1970) A British mathematician, the discoverer of Russell's paradox.
  • beryllium copper — a copper alloy containing a small amount of beryllium and often some nickel or cobalt, having high strength, hardness, and electrical conductivity.
  • bias-belted tire — belted-bias tire.
  • bicyclic terpene — (originally) any of a class of monocyclic hydrocarbons of the formula C 10 H 16 , obtained from plants.
  • bidirectionality — capable of reacting or functioning in two, usually opposite, directions.
  • billy goat beard — a man's beard that is long under the chin and shaved elsewhere
  • 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
  • binomial theorem — a mathematical theorem that gives the expansion of any binomial raised to a positive integral power, n. It contains n + 1 terms: (x + a)n = xn + nxn–1a + [n(n–1)/2] xn–2a2 +…+ (nk) xn–kak + … + an, where (nk) = n!/(n–k)!k!, the number of combinations of k items selected from n
  • binuclear family — a social unit composed of an extended family, usually the children and subsequent spouses of divorced parents.
  • biodegradability — capable of decaying through the action of living organisms: biodegradable paper; biodegradable detergent.
  • bioenvironmental — pertaining to the environment of living organisms: Bioenvironmental engineers seek to reduce air and water pollution.
  • biometeorologist — the scientific study of the effects of natural or artificial atmospheric conditions, as temperature and humidity, on living organisms.
  • bipolar disorder — Bipolar disorder is a mental illness in which a person's state of mind changes between extreme happiness and extreme depression.
  • bird of ill omen — a person who brings bad news.
  • bird's-eye maple — a cut of sugar maple wood used especially for veneers, having a wavy grain with many dark, circular markings.
  • bitter principle — any of various bitter-tasting substances, such as aloin, usually extracted from plants
  • black chokeberry — See under chokeberry (def 1).
  • black woodpecker — a large woodpecker, Dryocopus martius, found in parts of Eurasia and Africa
  • black-letter day — an unlucky or tragic day.
  • blacktailed deer — a mule deer, esp. the subspecies (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) found from N Calif. to British Columbia
  • blackwater fever — a rare and serious complication of malaria, characterized by massive destruction of red blood cells, producing dark red or blackish urine
  • bleaching powder — a white powder with the odour of chlorine, consisting of chlorinated calcium hydroxide with an approximate formula CaCl(OCl).4H2O. It is used in solution as a bleaching agent and disinfectant
  • bleeder resistor — a resistor connected across the output terminals of a power supply in order to improve voltage regulation and to discharge filter capacitors
  • blended learning — the use of both classroom teaching and on-line learning
  • blind man's rule — a carpenter's rule having large numbers to permit its reading in dim light.
  • blind salamander — any of several North American salamanders, especially of the genera Typhlotriton, Typhlomolge, and Haideotriton, that inhabit underground streams or deep wells and have undeveloped eyes and scant pigmentation.
  • block-structured — (language)   Any programming language in which sections of source code contained within pairs of matching delimiters such as "" and "" (e.g. in C) or "begin" and "end" (e.g. Algol) are executed as a single unit. A block of code may be the body of a subroutine or function, or it may be controlled by conditional execution (if statement) or repeated execution (while statement, for statement, etc.). In all but the most primitive block structured languages a variable's scope can be limited to the block in which it is declared. Block-structured languages support structured programming where each block can be written without detailed knowledge of the inner workings of other blocks, thus allowing a top-down design approach. See also abstract data type, module.
  • blocked currency — a currency that is not freely convertible because of exchange controls imposed on it
  • blow one's cover — to be or serve as a covering for; extend over; rest on the surface of: Snow covered the fields.
  • blue dawn-flower — a tropical American vine, Ipomoea acuminata, of the morning glory family, having large, funnel-shaped flowers that turn from blue to pink.
  • blue huckleberry — tangleberry.
  • blue mockingbird — any of several gray, black, and white songbirds of the genus Mimus, especially M. polyglottos, of the U.S. and Mexico, noted for their ability to mimic the songs of other birds.
  • blue-green algae — any of a division (Cyanophycota) of photosynthetic monerans, microorganisms that contain a blue pigment which obscures the chlorophyll; cyanobacteria
  • blue-ribbon jury — a jury composed of persons having more than ordinary education and presumably exceptional intelligence and perceptiveness, selected by the court on the motion of plaintiff or defendant to try cases of unusual complexity or importance.
  • bluegrass region — a region in central Kentucky, famous for its horse farms and fields of bluegrass.
  • blunt instrument — something such as a hammer, used as a weapon
  • boarding kennels — a place where dog owners can pay to have their dogs looked after while they are away
  • bob's your uncle — everything is or will turn out all right
  • bog whortleberry — a plant, Vaccinium uliginosum, of mountain regions, having pink flowers and black fruits
  • bois de rose oil — rosewood oil.
  • bomb calorimeter — a device for determining heats of combustion by igniting a sample in a high pressure of oxygen in a sealed vessel and measuring the resulting rise in temperature: used for measuring the calorific value of foods
  • bon gre, mal gre — whether willing or not; willy-nilly.
  • 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.
  • bordelaise sauce — a dark sauce made from meat stock, flour, wine, onions, seasonings, etc., served over broiled meat
  • border leicester — a breed of sheep originally developed in the border country between Scotland and England by crossing English Leicesters with Cheviots: large numbers in Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand. It has a long white fleece with no wool on the head
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