14-letter words containing s, e, l, i
- ballon d'essai — a project or policy put forward experimentally to gauge reactions to it
- balsaminaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Balsaminaceae, a family of flowering plants, including balsam and touch-me-not, that have irregular flowers and explosive capsules
- baptismal name — Christian name (def 1).
- barium sulfate — an odorless, tasteless, white powder, BaSO4, insoluble in water: it is used as a paint pigment, as a filler for paper, textiles , etc., and as an opaque substance that is ingested to aid in making diagnostic X-rays of the stomach and intestine
- 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 shifter — (hardware) A hardware device that can shift or rotate a data word by any number of bits in a single operation. It is implemented like a multiplexor, each output can be connected to any input depending on the shift distance.
- 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-ridley — ridley (def 1).
- battle cruiser — A battle cruiser is a large fast warship that is lighter than a battleship and moves more easily.
- battle of wits — If you refer to a situation as a battle of wits, you mean that it involves people with opposing aims who compete with each other using their intelligence, rather than force.
- battle station — the place or position that one is assigned to for battle or in an emergency.
- batwing sleeve — a sleeve of a garment with a deep armhole and a tight wrist
- bazillionaires — Plural form of bazillionaire.
- belisha beacon — a flashing light in an orange globe mounted on a post, indicating a pedestrian crossing on a road
- belletristical — relating to the fine arts
- bellingshausen — Fabian Gottlieb von [fey-bee-uh n-got-leeb von] /ˈfeɪ bi ənˈgɒt lib vɒn/ (Show IPA), (Faddey Faddeyevich Bellingshauzen) 1778–1852, Russian naval officer and explorer.
- belvoir castle — a castle in Leicestershire, near Grantham (in Lincolnshire): seat of the Dukes of Rutland; rebuilt by James Wyatt in 1816
- beneficialness — the state of being beneficial
- benzosulfimide — saccharin.
- berkner island — an island in Antarctica, in the S Weddell Sea, between the Ronne Ice Shelf and the Filchner Ice Shelf.
- bernicle goose — barnacle goose
- beside oneself — If you are beside yourself with anger or excitement, you are extremely angry or excited.
- between whiles — now and then; at intervals
- bewilderedness — the state of being bewildered
- bicuspid valve — mitral valve
- bidialectalism — the state of being bidialectal
- bildungsromane — a type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist.
- billy no-mates — a person with no friends
- bioelectronics — a branch of electronics that deals with electronic devices, implants, etc. used in medicine and biological research
- bioluminescent — the production of light by living organisms.
- bioregionalism — the conviction that environmental and social policies should be determined by the bioregion rather than economics or politics
- bioregionalist — someone who believes in bioregionalism
- bircher muesli — a type of muesli containing softened oats, dried fruit, and apple
- biscuit barrel — an airtight container of circular section equipped with a lid and used for storing biscuits
- bishops' bible — an English translation of the Bible made under the direction of Matthew Parker and published in 1568: the recognized translation of the Bible in England until the Authorized (King James) Version of 1611.
- bite one's lip — If you bite your lip or your tongue, you stop yourself from saying something that you want to say, because it would be the wrong thing to say in the circumstances.
- bits per pixel — (hardware, graphics) (bpp) The number of bits of information stored per pixel of an image or displayed by a graphics adapter. The more bits there are, the more colours can be represented, but the more memory is required to store or display the image. A colour can be described by the intensities of red, green and blue (RGB) components. Allowing 8 bits (1 byte) per component (24 bits per pixel) gives 256 levels for each component and over 16 million different colours - more than the human eye can distinguish. Microsoft Windows [and others?] calls this truecolour. An image of 1024x768 with 24 bpp requires over 2 MB of memory. "High colour" uses 16 bpp (or 15 bpp), 5 bits for blue, 5 bits for red and 6 bits for green. This reduced colour precision gives a slight loss of image quality at a 1/3 saving on memory. Standard VGA uses a palette of 16 colours (4 bpp), each colour in the palette is 24 bit. Standard SVGA uses a palette of 256 colours (8 bpp). Some graphics hardware and software support 32-bit colour depths, including an 8-bit "alpha channel" for transparency effects.
- black selenium — an allotropic form of selenium occurring as a black, amorphous, water-insoluble, light-sensitive powder: used chiefly in photoelectric cells.
- black squirrel — a fox squirrel or gray squirrel in that color phase in which the fur is black.
- blade-shearing — the shearing of sheep using hand shears
- blanket finish — a finish so close that a blanket would cover all the contestants involved
- blanket stitch — a strong reinforcing stitch for the edges of blankets and other thick material
- blanket-stitch — a basic sewing stitch in which widely spaced, interlocking loops, or purls, are formed, used for cutwork, as a decorative finish for edges, etc.
- 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 beetle — any beetle of the family Meloidae, many of which produce a secretion that blisters the skin