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14-letter words containing s, p, a, t

  • bacteriophages — Plural form of bacteriophage.
  • ballast pocket — a depression that is formed beneath the ballast layer by penetration of ballast particles into the subgrade and that tends to collect moisture.
  • ballet slipper — a heelless cloth or leather slipper worn by ballet dancers.
  • baptismal font — a large bowl for baptismal water, usually mounted on a pedestal
  • baptismal name — Christian name (def 1).
  • baptismal vows — the solemn promises made during baptism, either by the person baptized or by his or her sponsors
  • base component — the system of rules in a transformational grammar that specify the deep structure of the language
  • bipartisanship — representing, characterized by, or including members from two parties or factions: Government leaders hope to achieve a bipartisan foreign policy.
  • bipolarisation — the act of bipolarising
  • bisphosphonate — any drug of a class that inhibits the resorption of bone; used in treating certain bone disorders, esp osteoporosis
  • bitmap display — (hardware)   A computer output device where each pixel displayed on the monitor screen corresponds directly to one or more bits in the computer's video memory. Such a display can be updated extremely rapidly since changing a pixel involves only a single processor write to memory compared with a terminal or VDU connected via a serial line where the speed of the serial line limits the speed at which the display can be changed. Most modern personal computers and workstations have bitmap displays, allowing the efficient use of graphical user interfaces, interactive graphics and a choice of on-screen fonts. Some more expensive systems still delegate graphics operations to dedicated hardware such as graphics accelerators. The bitmap display might be traced back to the earliest days of computing when the Manchester University Mark I(?) computer, developed by F.C. Williams and T. Kilburn shortly after the Second World War. This used a storage tube as its working memory. Phosphor dots were used to store single bits of data which could be read by the user and interpreted as binary numbers.
  • 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.
  • blepharoplasty — cosmetic surgery performed on the eyelid
  • blind stamping — an impression on a book cover without using colour or gold leaf
  • blister-packed — presented in a blister pack
  • block capitals — Block capitals are simple capital letters that are not decorated in any way.
  • bophuthatswana — (formerly) a Bantu homeland in N South Africa: consisted of six separate areas; declared independent by South Africa in 1977 although this was not internationally recognized; abolished in 1993. Capital: Mmabatho
  • breast implant — an object such as a sachet filled with gel introduced surgically into a woman's breast to enlarge it
  • britney spears — beers
  • broad-spectrum — effective against a wide variety of diseases or microorganisms
  • bronchospastic — of or relating to bronchospasms
  • brood parasite — a young bird hatched and reared by birds of a different species as a result of brood parasitism.
  • bulk transport — the transport of large quantities of goods or commodities in lorries, ships, or by rail
  • bush carpenter — a rough-and-ready unskilled workman
  • bush telegraph — a means of communication between primitive peoples over large areas, as by drum beats
  • campaign chest — money collected and set aside for use in a campaign, especially a political one; a campaign fund.
  • campylobacters — Plural form of campylobacter.
  • campylotropous — (of an ovule) curved so that the micropyle and funiculus almost touch
  • can't help sth — If you can't help the way you feel or behave, you cannot control it or stop it happening. You can also say that you can't help yourself.
  • capital assets — any assets, tangible or intangible, that are held for long-term investment
  • capitalisation — The act or process of capitalising.
  • captain's mast — a hearing conducted by the captain of a vessel into minor offences of the crew
  • captain's pick — the selection by a team's captain of a player for that team, often a player who has not met criteria for automatic selection
  • captain's walk — widow's walk
  • carpet slipper — Carpet slippers are soft, comfortable slippers.
  • carpet sweeper — a pushable, long-handled implement for removing dirt, lint, etc., from rugs and carpets, consisting of a metal case enclosing one or more brushes that rotate.
  • carpet-sweeper — a household device with a revolving brush for sweeping carpets
  • case and paste — (programming)   (From "cut and paste") The addition of a new feature to an existing system by selecting the code from an existing feature and pasting it in with minor changes. This usually results in gross violation of the fundamental programming tenet, Don't Repeat Yourself. Common in telephony circles because most operations in a telephone switch are selected using "case" statements. Leads to software bloat. In some circles of Emacs users this is called "programming by Meta-W", because Meta-W is the Emacs command for copying a block of text to a kill buffer in preparation to pasting it in elsewhere. The term is condescending, implying that the programmer is acting mindlessly rather than thinking carefully about what is required to integrate the code for two similar cases. At DEC, this is sometimes called "clone-and-hack" coding.
  • castrop-rauxel — an industrial city in W Germany, in North Rhine-Westphalia. Pop: 78 208 (2003 est)
  • catastrophical — of the nature of a catastrophe, or disastrous event; calamitous: a catastrophic failure of the dam.
  • catastrophized — Simple past tense and past participle of catastrophize.
  • catechumenship — the office or position of a catechumen
  • caustic potash — potassium hydroxide
  • cavalier poets — a group of mid-17th-century English lyric poets, mostly courtiers of Charles I. Chief among them were Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, and Richard Lovelace
  • celestial pole — either of the two points at which the earth's axis, extended to infinity, would intersect the celestial sphere
  • central powers — (before World War I) Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary after they were linked by the Triple Alliance in 1882
  • centripetalism — the movement of things towards a centre
  • cephalometrics — The measurement and analysis of the craniofacial area, especially as an aid to dental or orthodontic procedures.
  • chapel of rest — a room in an undertaker's place of business where bodies are laid out in their coffins to be viewed before the funeral
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