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14-letter words containing s, t, e, r

  • barbados earth — a diatomaceous marl found in Barbados
  • barbary states — semi-independent Turkish provinces along the coast of N Africa (16th-19th cent.); Tripoli, Tunisia, Algeria, & Morocco
  • barium sulfate — an odorless, tasteless, white powder, BaSO4, insoluble in water: it is used as a paint pigment, as a filler for paper, textiles , etc., and as an opaque substance that is ingested to aid in making diagnostic X-rays of the stomach and intestine
  • barrel shifter — (hardware)   A hardware device that can shift or rotate a data word by any number of bits in a single operation. It is implemented like a multiplexor, each output can be connected to any input depending on the shift distance.
  • barrel-chested — A barrel-chested man has a large, rounded chest.
  • basque country — Theregion comprising three provinces in N Spain, on the Bay of Biscay, inhabited by Basques: 2,803 sq mi (7,260 sq km); pop. 2,104,000
  • bastard ridley — ridley (def 1).
  • bastard turtle — ridley (def 1).
  • bastard-ridley — ridley (def 1).
  • bastard-turtle — ridley (def 1).
  • basting thread — inexpensive, loosely twisted thread that can be easily pulled out when permanent stitching is in place
  • battle cruiser — A battle cruiser is a large fast warship that is lighter than a battleship and moves more easily.
  • battle-scarred — adversely affected from the experience of battle, or some other traumatic experience
  • 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
  • beard-stroking — deep thought
  • beaufort scale — an international scale of wind velocities ranging for practical purposes from 0 (calm) to 12 (hurricane force). In the US an extension of the scale, from 13 to 17 for winds over 64 knots, is used
  • beggar's-ticks — tick trefoil
  • belaya tserkov — city in WC Ukraine: pop. 204,000
  • belles-lettres — literary works, esp essays and poetry, valued for their aesthetic rather than their informative or moral content
  • belletristical — relating to the fine arts
  • belvoir castle — a castle in Leicestershire, near Grantham (in Lincolnshire): seat of the Dukes of Rutland; rebuilt by James Wyatt in 1816
  • 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
  • bessemer steel — steel made by the Bessemer process.
  • bet your boots — to be certain; rely on it
  • beta structure — a secondary structure occurring in many proteins, consisting of several polypeptide chains running in parallel or alternating directions and joined by intermolecular hydrogen bonds, creating a flexible, strong arrangement.
  • betray oneself — to reveal one's true character, intentions, etc
  • 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.
  • binding strake — a very strong, heavy strake of planking, especially one next to a sheer strake.
  • bioaeronautics — the use of aircraft in the discovery, development, and protection of natural and biological resources
  • biocybernetics — the branch of cybernetics that deals with the control and communication systems of living organisms
  • bioelectronics — a branch of electronics that deals with electronic devices, implants, etc. used in medicine and biological research
  • biometric risk — Biometric risk covers all risks related to human life conditions, such as death, birth, disability, age, and number of children.
  • bioprospecting — searching for plant or animal species for use as a source of commercially exploitable products, such as medicinal drugs
  • bioregionalist — someone who believes in bioregionalism
  • biscuit barrel — an airtight container of circular section equipped with a lid and used for storing biscuits
  • bishop's mitre — a European heteropterous bug, Aelia acuminata, whose larvae are a pest of cereal grasses: family Pentatomidae
  • bits per pixel — (hardware, graphics)   (bpp) The number of bits of information stored per pixel of an image or displayed by a graphics adapter. The more bits there are, the more colours can be represented, but the more memory is required to store or display the image. A colour can be described by the intensities of red, green and blue (RGB) components. Allowing 8 bits (1 byte) per component (24 bits per pixel) gives 256 levels for each component and over 16 million different colours - more than the human eye can distinguish. Microsoft Windows [and others?] calls this truecolour. An image of 1024x768 with 24 bpp requires over 2 MB of memory. "High colour" uses 16 bpp (or 15 bpp), 5 bits for blue, 5 bits for red and 6 bits for green. This reduced colour precision gives a slight loss of image quality at a 1/3 saving on memory. Standard VGA uses a palette of 16 colours (4 bpp), each colour in the palette is 24 bit. Standard SVGA uses a palette of 256 colours (8 bpp). Some graphics hardware and software support 32-bit colour depths, including an 8-bit "alpha channel" for transparency effects.
  • bitter cassava — a species of cassava (Manihot esculenta) whose poisonous roots when processed yield tapioca starch
  • black panthers — (in the US) a militant Black political party founded in 1965 to end the political dominance of White people
  • black redstart — a small, Passerine bird, Phoenicurus ochruros, found in Central and S Europe
  • blepharoplasty — cosmetic surgery performed on the eyelid
  • bletheranskate — a blatherer
  • blind register — (in the United Kingdom) a list of those who are blind and are therefore entitled to financial and other benefits
  • blind staggers — the staggers
  • blister beetle — any beetle of the family Meloidae, many of which produce a secretion that blisters the skin
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