16-letter words containing s, t, e, p
- batch processing — manufacturing products or treating materials in batches, by passing the output of one process to subsequent processes
- bearing pedestal — an independent support for a bearing, usually incorporating a bearing housing
- beauty therapist — a person whose job is to carry out treatments to improve a person's appearance, such as facials, manicures, removal of unwanted hair, etc
- beside the point — If you say that something is beside the point, you mean that it is not relevant to the subject that you are discussing.
- 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
- bird's-nest soup — a rich spicy Chinese soup made from the outer part of the nests of SE Asian swifts of the genus Collocalia
- birthday present — a gift given to someone on their birthday
- boatswain's pipe — a whistle used formerly to give orders on board ship
- 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.
- bootstrap memory — memory that allows new programs to be entered because some simple preliminary instructions or information are already built in.
- boston cream pie — a cake of two layers with icing and a creamy filling
- boston tea party — a raid in 1773 made by citizens of Boston (disguised as Indians) on three British ships in the harbour as a protest against taxes on tea and the monopoly given to the East India Company. The contents of several hundred chests of tea were dumped into the harbour
- boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
- bouquet larkspur — a plant, Delphinium grandiflorum, of eastern Asia, having blue or whitish flowers and hairy fruit.
- branchiopneustic — breathing by means of gills, as certain aquatic insect larvae.
- 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
- brothel-creepers — soft-soled men's shoes that were originally popular in the 1950s
- bulletproof vest — a protective garment
- bust one's chops — Usually, chops. the jaw.
- buttercup squash — a small, usually dark-green squash that is a variety of Cucurbita maxima, having sweet orange flesh.
- button one's lip — to stop talking: often imperative
- bypass operation — an operation involving redirection of blood flow, either to avoid a diseased blood vessel or in order to perform heart surgery
- canine distemper — distemper1 (def 1a).
- capital reserves — the money which a company holds in reserve
- capital sentence — the punishment of death for a crime
- capsizing moment — the moment of an upsetting couple.
- carboxypeptidase — any of several digestive enzymes that catalyze the removal of an amino acid from the end of a peptide chain having a free carbonyl group.
- career prospects — the probability or chance for future success in a profession
- cascade particle — the least massive member of the xi particle family.
- celestial empire — Chinese Empire
- celestial sphere — an imaginary sphere of infinitely large radius enclosing the universe so that all celestial bodies appear to be projected onto its surface
- chattel personal — an item of movable personal property, such as furniture, domestic animals, etc
- checking deposit — a deposit on which cheques may be drawn
- chemolithotrophs — Plural form of chemolithotroph.
- chest specialist — a physician who specializes in diseases affecting the organs in the chest
- chipped potatoes — chips
- cholecystography — radiography of the gall bladder after administration of a contrast medium
- chopped tomatoes — tomatoes cut into pieces
- christmas hamper — a collection of seasonal delicacies, often housed in a wicker hamper, which people or organizations give as Christmas presents
- chromatographies — Plural form of chromatography.
- chryselephantine — (of ancient Greek statues) made of or overlaid with gold and ivory
- chymotrypsinogen — the inactive precursor of chymotrypsin
- circumscriptible — Capable of being circumscribed or limited by bounds.
- circumsporozoite — (biology, of a protein) Located on the surface of a sporozoite (and involved in host cell recognition and invasion); abbreviated as CS.
- closed-captioned — (of a video recording) having subtitles which appear on screen only if the cassette is played through a special decoder
- compartmentalise — to divide into categories or compartments.
- complex sentence — a sentence containing at least one main clause and one subordinate clause
- complexity class — (algorithm) A collection of algorithms or computable functions with the same complexity.
- complicitousness — (rare, possibly nonstandard) Complicity.