14-letter words containing s, p, o
- baptismal font — a large bowl for baptismal water, usually mounted on a pedestal
- baptismal vows — the solemn promises made during baptism, either by the person baptized or by his or her sponsors
- barbados pride — Also called bead tree. a tropical African and Asian tree, Adenanthera pavonina, of the legume family, having feathery foliage and bearing red seeds that are used in beadwork.
- bare ownership — ownership of a piece of property without the right to use and derive profit from that property
- base component — the system of rules in a transformational grammar that specify the deep structure of the language
- bass saxophone — a large saxophone of low range, usually supported on a stand while being played.
- basso profundo — (esp in operatic solo singing) a singer with a very deep bass voice
- bay psalm book — a translation of the Psalms by John Eliot and others: the first book published (1640) in America.
- beggar's opera — a ballad opera (1728) with text by John Gay and music arranged by John Pepusch.
- benday process — a process for adding tone or shading, as in reproducing drawings, by the overlay on the plate of patterns, as of dots
- beyond dispute — not open to dispute or question; settled
- biceps femoris — See under biceps.
- bioprospecting — searching for plant or animal species for use as a source of commercially exploitable products, such as medicinal drugs
- bipolarisation — the act of bipolarising
- bishop's mitre — a European heteropterous bug, Aelia acuminata, whose larvae are a pest of cereal grasses: family Pentatomidae
- 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.
- bisphosphonate — any drug of a class that inhibits the resorption of bone; used in treating certain bone disorders, esp osteoporosis
- 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.
- blepharoplasty — cosmetic surgery performed on the eyelid
- blister copper — an impure form of copper having a blister-like surface due to the release of gas during cooling
- block capitals — Block capitals are simple capital letters that are not decorated in any way.
- block sampling — the selection of a corpus for statistical literary analysis by random selection of a starting point and consideration of the continuous passage following it
- blood pressure — the pressure exerted by the blood on the inner walls of the arteries, being relative to the elasticity and diameter of the vessels and the force of the heartbeat
- blood spinning — a medical treatment, a use for which is the healing of sports-related injuries, that involves removing the platelet cells from the patient’s blood sample then injecting them into the injured area in order to speed recovery
- blow one's top — to lose one's temper
- bomb explosion — an explosion caused by the detonation of a bomb
- 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
- border dispute — a disagreement between countries about where the border between them should be drawn
- bottomless pit — If you describe a supply of something as bottomless, you mean that it seems so large that it will never run out.
- bouillon spoon — a spoon with a round bowl, smaller than a soup spoon.
- bow and scrape — to behave in an excessively deferential or obsequious way
- bowstring hemp — a hemplike fibre obtained from the sansevieria
- brewer's droop — an inability to get an erection because of excessive alcohol consumption
- 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.
- brownie points — a credit toward advancement or good standing gained especially by currying favor.
- bulk transport — the transport of large quantities of goods or commodities in lorries, ships, or by rail
- bursting point — the point at which normal capacity is exceeded.
- businesspeople — a person regularly employed in business, especially a white-collar worker, executive, or owner.
- businessperson — Businesspeople are people who work in business.
- butcher's shop — a shop dedicated to the selling of meat
- c power supply — a battery or other source of power for supplying a constant voltage bias to a control electrode of a vacuum tube.
- c preprocessor — (tool, programming) (cpp) The standard Unix macro-expansion utility run as the first phase of the C compiler, cc. Cpp interprets lines beginning with "#" such as #define BUFFER_SIZE 256 as a textual assignment giving the symbol BUFFER_SIZE a value "256". Symbols defined with cpp are traditionally given upper case names to distinguish them from C identifiers. This symbol can be used later in the input, as in char input_buffer[BUFFER_SIZE]; This use of cpp to name constants, rather than writing these magic numbers inline, makes a program easier to read and maintain, especially if there is more than one occurrence of BUFFER_SIZE all of which must all have the same value. Cpp macros can have parameters: #define BIT(n) (1<<(n)) This can be used with any appropriate actual argument: msb = BIT(nbits-1); Note the parentheses around the "n" in the definition of BIT. Without these, operator precedence might mean that the expression substituted in place of n might not be interpreted correctly (though the example above would be OK). Cpp also supports conditional compilation with the use of #ifdef SYMBOL ... #else ... #endif and #if EXPR ... #else ... #endif constructs, where SYMBOL is a Cpp symbol which may or may not be defined and EXPR is an arithmetic expression involving only Cpp symbols, constants and C operators which Cpp can evaluate to a constant at compile time. The most widely used C preprocessor today is the GNU CPP, distributed as part of GCC.
- camelopardalis — a N constellation between Ursa Major and Cassiopeia; the Giraffe
- camp counselor — activities supervisor
- campanulaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Campanulaceae, a family of temperate and subtropical plants, including the campanulas, having bell-shaped nodding flowers
- campylobacters — Plural form of campylobacter.
- campylotropous — (of an ovule) curved so that the micropyle and funiculus almost touch
- capitalisation — The act or process of capitalising.