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14-letter words containing s, h, r

  • bathing trunks — Bathing trunks are shorts that a man wears when he goes swimming.
  • bayes' theorem — the fundamental result which expresses the conditional probability P(E/A) of an event E given an event A as P(A/E).P(E)/P(A); more generally, where En is one of a set of values Ei which partition the sample space, P(En/A) = P(A/En)P(En)/Σ P(A/Ei)P(Ei). This enables prior estimates of probability to be continually revised in the light of observations
  • be cursed with — to be afflicted with; suffer from
  • be in the wars — If someone has been in the wars, they have been injured, for example in a fight or in an accident.
  • be struck with — to be attracted to or impressed by
  • bend the rules — to ignore rules or change them to suit one's own convenience
  • bermuda shorts — close-fitting shorts that come down to the knees
  • biceps brachii — See under biceps.
  • big brotherism — paternalistic authoritarianism that seeks to supply the needs and regulate the conduct of people.
  • big red switch — (jargon)   (BRS) IBM jargon for the power switch on a computer, especially the "Emergency Pull" switch on an IBM mainframe or the power switch on an IBM PC where it really is large and red. "This [email protected]%$% bitty box is hung again; time to hit the Big Red Switch." It is alleged that the emergency pull switch on an IBM 360/91 actually fired a non-conducting bolt into the main power feed; the BRSes on more recent mainframes physically drop a block into place so that they can't be pushed back in. People get fired for pulling them, especially inappropriately (see also molly-guard). Compare power cycle, three-finger salute, 120 reset; see also scram switch.
  • bill of rights — A Bill of Rights is a written list of citizens' rights which is usually part of the constitution of a country.
  • bipartisanship — representing, characterized by, or including members from two parties or factions: Government leaders hope to achieve a bipartisan foreign policy.
  • bircher muesli — a type of muesli containing softened oats, dried fruit, and apple
  • birthing stool — a stool constructed to allow a woman in labour to give birth in a sitting position
  • bishop's mitre — a European heteropterous bug, Aelia acuminata, whose larvae are a pest of cereal grasses: family Pentatomidae
  • black panthers — (in the US) a militant Black political party founded in 1965 to end the political dominance of White people
  • blacktip shark — a widely distributed sand shark, Charcharinus limbatus, having fins that appear to have been dipped in ink, inhabiting shallow waters of warm seas.
  • blade-shearing — the shearing of sheep using hand shears
  • blepharoplasty — cosmetic surgery performed on the eyelid
  • bletheranskate — a blatherer
  • boarding house — A boarding house is a house which people pay to stay in for a short time.
  • body of christ — the Christian Church
  • boolean search — (information science)   (Or "Boolean query") A query using the Boolean operators, AND, OR, and NOT, and parentheses to construct a complex condition from simpler criteria. A typical example is searching for combinatons of keywords on a web search engine. Examples: car or automobile "New York" and not "New York state" The term is sometimes stretched to include searches using other operators, e.g. "near". Not to be confused with binary search. See also: weighted search.
  • bosworth field — the site, two miles south of Market Bosworth in Leicestershire, of the battle that ended the Wars of the Roses (August 1485). Richard III was killed and Henry Tudor was crowned king as Henry VII
  • bowstring hemp — a hemplike fibre obtained from the sansevieria
  • braddock hills — a town in SE Pennsylvania.
  • branchiostegal — of or relating to the operculum covering the gill slits of fish
  • brass farthing — something of little or no value
  • braunschweiger — a smoked liver sausage, named after the city of Braunschweig
  • break the news — announce sth
  • breakfast show — a radio or television broadcast that airs around breakfast time
  • brecknockshire — a historic county in S Wales, now part of Powys, Gwent, and Mid Glamorgan.
  • bremsstrahlung — the radiation produced when an electrically charged particle, esp an electron, is slowed down by the electric field of an atomic nucleus or an atomic ion
  • brewster chair — a chair of 17th-century New England having heavy turned uprights with vertical turned spindles filling in the back, the space beneath the arms, and the spaces between the legs.
  • bring sth home — To bring something home to someone means to make them understand how important or serious it is.
  • british dollar — any of several coins formerly issued by the British Empire for use in certain territories, as the Straits dollar or the Hong Kong dollar.
  • british empire — (formerly) the United Kingdom and the territories under its control, which reached its greatest extent at the end of World War I when it embraced over a quarter of the world's population and more than a quarter of the world's land surface
  • british guiana — Guyana
  • british legion — (in Britain) a national social club for veterans of the armed forces.
  • british malaya — a comprehensive term for the former British possessions on the Malay Peninsula and the Malay Archipelago: now part of Malaysia.
  • british museum — a museum in London, founded in 1753: contains one of the world's richest collections of antiquities and (until 1997) most of the British Library
  • bronchiectasis — chronic dilation of the bronchi or bronchial tubes, which often become infected
  • bronchospastic — of or relating to bronchospasms
  • brown thrasher — a common large songbird, Toxostoma rufum, of the eastern U.S., having reddish-brown plumage.
  • brushed cotton — cotton fabric that is brushed to remove excess lint and fibres to leave a soft, smooth finish
  • bull stretcher — Also called bullnose stretcher. a brick having one of the edges along its length rounded for laying as a stretcher in a sill or the like.
  • burghley house — an Elizabethan mansion near Stamford in Lincolnshire: seat of the Cecil family; site of the annual Burghley Horse Trials
  • burschenschaft — a students' fraternity, originally one concerned with Christian ideals, patriotism, etc
  • bush carpenter — a rough-and-ready unskilled workman
  • bush telegraph — a means of communication between primitive peoples over large areas, as by drum beats
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