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16-letter words containing s, a, l

  • bird's-eye maple — a cut of sugar maple wood used especially for veneers, having a wavy grain with many dark, circular markings.
  • bite one's nails — to chew off the ends of one's fingernails
  • black nightshade — a poisonous solanaceous plant, Solanum nigrum, a common weed in cultivated land, having small white flowers with backward-curved petals and black berry-like fruits
  • black-eyed susan — any of several North American plants of the genus Rudbeckia, esp R. hirta, having flower heads of orange-yellow rays and brown-black centres: family Asteraceae (composites)
  • blasting gelatin — a type of plastic dynamite containing about 7 percent of a cellulose nitrate, used chiefly in underwater work.
  • blenheim spaniel — a variety of toy spaniel that is white with reddish-brown spots
  • blind man's buff — a game in which a blindfolded person tries to catch and identify the other players
  • 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.
  • blow one's stack — to lose one's temper; fly into a rage
  • bluegrass region — a region in central Kentucky, famous for its horse farms and fields of bluegrass.
  • boarding kennels — a place where dog owners can pay to have their dogs looked after while they are away
  • bonneville flats — an area of salt flats in the W part of Great Salt Lake Desert, in NW Utah: site of automobile speed tests.
  • 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
  • bornholm disease — an epidemic virus infection characterized by pain round the base of the chest
  • borosilicic acid — any of several hypothetical acids that form borosilicates.
  • bouquet larkspur — a plant, Delphinium grandiflorum, of eastern Asia, having blue or whitish flowers and hairy fruit.
  • bowman's capsule — a membranous, double-walled capsule surrounding a glomerulus of a nephron.
  • bracknell forest — a unitary authority in SE England, in E Berkshire. Pop: 110 100 (2003 est). Area: 109 sq km (42 sq miles)
  • braille embosser — Braille printer
  • breakfast cereal — a type of food made from a cereal plant and commonly eaten at breakfast
  • british columbia — a province of W Canada, on the Pacific coast: largely mountainous with extensive forests, rich mineral resources, and important fisheries. Capital: Victoria. Pop: 4 400 057 (2011 est). Area: 930 532 sq km (359 279 sq miles)
  • british longhair — a breed of large cat with a semi-long thick soft coat
  • brittany spaniel — a short-tailed French bird dog that typically has a smooth orange- or liver-and-white coat
  • brittle diabetes — uncontrolled insulin disorder
  • broad-shouldered — having broad shoulders
  • bronchial asthma — asthma.
  • buckley's chance — no chance at all
  • bullet-resistant — not allowing bullets to pass through
  • bullying tactics — the use of intimidation to gain one's objective
  • bundled software — software sold as part of a package with computers or other hardware or software
  • burge's language — Unnamed functional language based on lambda-calculus. Recursive Programming techniques", W.H. Burge, A-W 1975.
  • business analyst — (job)   A person who analyses the operations of a department or functional unit to develop a general systems solution to the problem. The solution will typically involve a combination of manual and automated processes. The business analyst can provide insights into an operation for an information systems analyst.
  • busman's holiday — If you have a holiday, but spend it doing something similar to your usual work, you can refer to it as a busman's holiday.
  • cable television — Cable television is a television system in which signals are sent along wires rather than by radio waves.
  • cadmium sulphide — an orange or yellow insoluble solid used as a pigment in paints, etc (cadmium yellow). Formula: CdS
  • calamian islands — a group of about 100 islands in the SW Philippines. 600 sq. mi. (1554 sq. km). Largest island, Busuanga.
  • calcium arsenate — a toxic, white powder, Ca3(AsO4)2, used as an insecticide in the form of a spray or dust
  • calcium silicate — any of the silicates of calcium: calcium metasilicate, dicalcium silicate, and tricalcium silicate.
  • calculate a risk — If you calculate a risk, you decide how likely an event is, whether the insurer should underwrite the risk, and at what cost.
  • call in question — a sentence in an interrogative form, addressed to someone in order to get information in reply.
  • call one's shots — a discharge of a firearm, bow, etc.
  • call to quarters — a bugle call shortly before taps, notifying soldiers to retire to their quarters
  • camomile shampoo — a liquid or cream preparation of soap or detergent with camomile extract to wash the hair
  • canada bluegrass — a Eurasian grass, Poa compressa, naturalized in North America, having creeping rootstocks and bluish-green leaves.
  • canadian english — the English language as spoken in Canada
  • canadian soldier — the mayfly.
  • cannonball serve — (in tennis) a very fast low serve
  • canterbury bells — a cultivated bellflower (Campanula medium) with white, pink, or blue cuplike flowers
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