16-letter words containing s, d, e
- balearic islands — a group of islands in the W Mediterranean, consisting of Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza, Formentera, Cabrera, and 11 islets: a province of Spain. Capital: Palma, on Majorca. Pop: 1 071 500 (2003 est). Area: 5012 sq km (1935 sq miles)
- band-pass filter — a filter that transmits only those currents having a frequency lying within specified limits
- banned substance — In sport, banned substances are drugs that competitors are not allowed to take because they could artificially improve their performance.
- baron tweedsmuir — the title of Scottish novelist John Buchan
- barrier of ideas — the representations of objects which certain accounts of perception interpose between the objects themselves and our awareness of them, so that, as critics argue, we can never know whether there is in reality anything which resembles our perceptions
- bartholomeu dias — Bartholomeu [bahr-too-loo-me-oo] /ˌbɑr tʊ lʊˈmɛ ʊ/ (Show IPA), c1450–1500, Portuguese navigator: discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope.
- basic dichromate — an orange-red, amorphous, water-insoluble powder, Bi 2 O 3 ⋅2CrO 3 , used chiefly as a pigment in paints.
- bastard culverin — a 16th-century cannon, smaller than a culverin, firing a shot of between 5 and 8 pounds (11 and 17.6 kg).
- bastard daughter — an illegitimate daughter
- be as good as to — would you please
- bearing pedestal — an independent support for a bearing, usually incorporating a bearing housing
- bearish tendency — a tendency for share prices to fall
- bed-sitting room — a combined bedroom and sitting room serving as a one-room apartment
- behind the times — You can use the times to refer to the present time and to modern fashions, tastes, and developments. For example, if you say that someone keeps up with the times, you mean they are fashionable or aware of modern developments. If you say they are behind the times, you mean they are unfashionable or not aware of them.
- belgian sheepdog — any of a Belgian breed of large herding dog with a black coat, sometimes used as a guide dog
- bells of ireland — an annual garden plant, Moluccella laevis, whose flowers have a green cup-shaped calyx: family Lamiaceae (labiates)
- belted-bias tire — a motor-vehicle tire of the same construction as a bias-ply tire but with an added belt of steel or a strong synthetic material under the tread.
- benzoate of soda — sodium benzoate
- bertrand russell — (person) (1872-1970) A British mathematician, the discoverer of Russell's paradox.
- beside the point — If you say that something is beside the point, you mean that it is not relevant to the subject that you are discussing.
- best-before date — a date on packaged food indicating how long it is safe to keep it
- bias-belted tire — belted-bias tire.
- 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 paradise — A bird of paradise is a songbird which is found mainly in New Guinea. The male birds have very brightly coloured feathers.
- bird's-eye maple — a cut of sugar maple wood used especially for veneers, having a wavy grain with many dark, circular markings.
- bird's-nest fern — a tropical fern, Asplenium nidus, having fronds arranged in clumps resembling a bird's nest.
- 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
- bird-of-paradise — Also called bird-of-paradise flower. any of several plants of the genus Strelitzia, native to southern Africa, especially S. reginae, having a large, showy orange and blue inflorescence.
- birthday present — a gift given to someone on their birthday
- 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)
- bleeder resistor — a resistor connected across the output terminals of a power supply in order to improve voltage regulation and to discharge filter capacitors
- 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.
- blonde bombshell — Journalists sometimes use blonde bombshell to refer to a woman with blonde hair who is very attractive.
- blood substitute — a substance such as plasma, albumin, or dextran, used to replace lost blood or increase the blood volume
- boarding kennels — a place where dog owners can pay to have their dogs looked after while they are away
- bois de boulogne — a large park in W Paris, formerly a forest: includes the racecourses of Auteuil and Longchamp
- bois de rose oil — rosewood oil.
- bonded warehouse — a warehouse in which dutiable goods are deposited until duty is paid or the goods are cleared for export
- 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
- bornholm disease — an epidemic virus infection characterized by pain round the base of the chest
- bouches-du-rhone — a department of S central France, in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Capital: Marseille. Pop: 1 883 645 (2003 est). Area: 5284 sq km (2047 sq miles)
- boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
- braking distance — the distance a vehicle travels from the point at which its brakes are applied to the point at which it comes to a stop
- brave west winds — the strong west and west-northwest winds blowing between latitudes 40° S and 60° S.
- break one's word — to fail to keep one's promise