0%

16-letter words containing s, e, t, l

  • 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.
  • benito mussolini — Benito [buh-nee-toh;; Italian be-nee-taw] /bəˈni toʊ;; Italian bɛˈni tɔ/ (Show IPA), (I"Il Duce") 1883–1945, Italian Fascist leader: premier of Italy 1922–43.
  • benoit samuelson — Joan (Joan Benoit) born 1957, U.S. distance runner: first Olympic marathon women's winner, 1984.
  • berners-lee, tim — Tim Berners-Lee
  • 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.
  • bias-belted tire — belted-bias tire.
  • 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
  • biometeorologist — the scientific study of the effects of natural or artificial atmospheric conditions, as temperature and humidity, on living organisms.
  • 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
  • blasting gelatin — a type of plastic dynamite containing about 7 percent of a cellulose nitrate, used chiefly in underwater work.
  • bleeder resistor — a resistor connected across the output terminals of a power supply in order to improve voltage regulation and to discharge filter capacitors
  • 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.
  • blood substitute — a substance such as plasma, albumin, or dextran, used to replace lost blood or increase the blood volume
  • blow one's stack — to lose one's temper; fly into a rage
  • blow the whistle — to inform (on)
  • blunt instrument — something such as a hammer, used as a weapon
  • 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.
  • 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
  • bouquet larkspur — a plant, Delphinium grandiflorum, of eastern Asia, having blue or whitish flowers and hairy fruit.
  • bracknell forest — a unitary authority in SE England, in E Berkshire. Pop: 110 100 (2003 est). Area: 109 sq km (42 sq miles)
  • breakfast cereal — a type of food made from a cereal plant and commonly eaten at breakfast
  • bright-blindness — blindness occurring in sheep grazing pastures heavily infested with bracken
  • bring sb to heel — If you bring someone to heel, you force them to obey you.
  • bristlecone pine — a coniferous tree, Pinus aristata, of the western US, bearing cones with bristle-like prickles: one of the longest-lived trees, useful in radiocarbon dating
  • brittany spaniel — a short-tailed French bird dog that typically has a smooth orange- or liver-and-white coat
  • brittle diabetes — uncontrolled insulin disorder
  • brothel-creepers — soft-soled men's shoes that were originally popular in the 1950s
  • building society — In Britain, a building society is a business which will lend you money when you want to buy a house. You can also invest money in a building society, where it will earn interest. Compare savings and loan association.
  • bullet-resistant — not allowing bullets to pass through
  • bulletproof vest — a protective garment
  • bundled software — software sold as part of a package with computers or other hardware or software
  • burn oneself out — to undergo rapid combustion or consume fuel in such a way as to give off heat, gases, and, usually, light; be on fire: The fire burned in the grate.
  • 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.
  • butterfly scheme — A parallel version of Scheme for the BBN Butterfly computer.
  • butterfly stroke — a swimming stroke in which the arms are plunged forward together in large circular movements
  • button one's lip — to stop talking: often imperative
  • cable television — Cable television is a television system in which signals are sent along wires rather than by radio waves.
  • 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
  • canterbury bells — a cultivated bellflower (Campanula medium) with white, pink, or blue cuplike flowers
  • canterbury tales — an unfinished literary work by Chaucer, largely in verse, consisting of stories told by pilgrims on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket at Canterbury
  • capital reserves — the money which a company holds in reserve
  • capital sentence — the punishment of death for a crime
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?