15-letter words containing s, e, c, r
- bacterial ghost — a bacterial cell that is emptied and filled artificially with another substance
- bacteriophagous — Pertaining to the predation and consumption of bacterium.
- barley sandwich — a drink of beer, esp at lunch time
- barn conversion — the adaptation of a farm barn into a building serving a different use, such as a house or commercial premises
- barracks lawyer — a member of the armed forces who speaks or acts like an authority on military law, regulations, and the rights of service personnel.
- basic anhydride — a compound formed by removing water from a more complex compound: an oxide of a nonmetal (acid anhydride) or a metal (basic anhydride) that forms an acid or a base, respectively, when united with water.
- basic autocoder — Early system on IBM 7070. Listed in CACM 2(5):16 (May 1959).
- bathroom scales — scales typically kept in a bathroom for people to weigh themselves
- bear comparison — to be sufficiently similar in class or range to be compared with (something else), esp favourably
- béarnaise sauce — a creamy sauce, esp. for meat or fish, made of butter and egg yolks and flavored with wine, vinegar, shallots, and herbs
- beginner's luck — the initial good fortune or success commonly supposed to come to a person who has recently taken up a new pursuit, as a sport or game: Catching a large trout the first time you go fishing is simply beginner's luck.
- belt-and-braces — providing double security, in case one security measure should fail
- ben day process — a method of adding texture, shading, or detail to line drawings by overlaying a transparent sheet of dots or any other pattern during platemaking
- berenice's hair — the constellation Coma Berenices
- bergius process — a method of hydrogenation formerly used with coal to produce an oil similar to petroleum.
- berkeley castle — a castle in Gloucestershire: scene of the murder of Edward II in 1327
- beta conversion — (theory) A term from lambda-calculus for beta reduction or beta abstraction.
- big sandy creek — a river in central Colorado, flowing NE and SE to the Arkansas River near Lamar: site of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre. 200 miles (322 km) long.
- biodestructible — biodegradable
- biogeochemistry — the science of biological, chemical, and geological aspects of the environment
- bits per second — (communications, unit) (bps, b/s) The unit in which data rate is measured. For example, a modem's data rate is usually measured in kilobits per second. In 1996, the maximum modem speed for use on the PSTN was 33.6 kbps, rising to 56 kbps in 1997. Note that kilo- (k), mega- (M), etc. in data rates denote powers of 1000, not 1024.
- black raspberry — a plant, Rubus occidentalis, of E North America, that has black berry-like fruits
- black sea bream — a sparid fish, Spondyliosoma cantharus, found in N Europe and the Mediterranean
- black september — a Palestinian Terrorist group, responsible for the assassinations of Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games at Munich in 1972
- black snakeroot — a tall bugbane, Cimicifuga racemosa, of the buttercup family, of eastern North America, having thin, tapering, toothed or deeply cut leaflets and branched clusters of small, white flowers.
- blackberry bush — a bush on which blackberries grow
- blocked records — (storage) Several records written as a contiguous block on magnetic tape so that they may be accessed in a single I/O operation. Blocking increases the amount of data that may be stored on a tape because there are fewer inter-block gaps. It requires that the tape drive or processor have a sufficiently large buffer to store the whole block.
- blood corpuscle — one of the cells in the blood
- bloody butchers — a hardy plant, Trillium sessile, common from New York to Georgia and westward, having stalkless, purple or green flowers.
- blow one's cork — to lose one's temper; become enraged
- booster cushion — an extra seat or cushion placed on an existing seat for a child to sit on in a car
- borderline case — a person or thing that is not clearly classifiable as something
- borrower's card — a card issued by a library to individuals or organizations entitling them or their representatives to borrow materials.
- boston massacre — an outbreak (1770) in Boston against British troops, in which a few citizens were killed
- boustrophedonic — of or relating to lines written in opposite directions
- brachial plexus — a network of nerves in the armpits and neck, innervating the shoulders, arms, and hands.
- brachistochrone — the curve between two points through which a body moves under the force of gravity in a shorter time than for any other curve; the path of quickest descent
- brackett series — a series of lines in the infrared spectrum of hydrogen.
- branching rules — rules that are used to break down a complex problem into several smaller problems
- branchiostegous — branchiostegal.
- bravais lattice — any of 14 possible space lattices found in crystals
- breach of trust — a violation of duty by a trustee or any other person in a fiduciary position
- breathing space — A breathing space is a short period of time between two activities in which you can recover from the first activity and prepare for the second one.
- bristol channel — an inlet of the Atlantic, between S Wales and SW England, merging into the Severn estuary. Length: about 137 km (85 miles)
- british america — British North America.
- british telecom — the popular name for British Telecommunications Group plc, the dominant fixed line telecommunications and broadband internet provider in the United Kingdom
- brocken specter — an optical phenomenon sometimes occurring at high altitudes when the image of an observer placed between the sun and a cloud is projected on the cloud as a greatly magnified shadow.
- bromoil process — a process for making an offset reproduction by first making a photographic print on paper with a silver bromide emulsion, wetting it, and then using it as a lithographic plate, the lighter parts of the emulsion tending to repel the oil base of the ink and the darker parts tending to hold it.
- bronchial tubes — the bronchi or their smaller divisions
- brush discharge — a slightly luminous electrical discharge between points of high charge density when the charge density is insufficient to cause a spark or around sharp points on a highly charged conductor because of ionization of air molecules in their vicinity