14-letter words containing s, t, r, e, b
- 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
- blister copper — an impure form of copper having a blister-like surface due to the release of gas during cooling
- blister-packed — presented in a blister pack
- blue straggler — one of a small group of blue stars within a cluster that falls near the main sequence even though other stars of its color have evolved off the main sequence.
- bone structure — the skeletal composition of a human or animal
- bone turquoise — fossilized bone or tooth stained blue with iron phosphate and used as a gemstone
- booster cables — jumper cables
- border dispute — a disagreement between countries about where the border between them should be drawn
- born yesterday — brought forth by birth.
- boston terrier — a short stocky smooth-haired breed of terrier with a short nose, originally developed by crossing the French and English bulldogs with the English bull terrier
- 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
- bouleversement — an overthrow or reversal; violent turmoil
- bound moisture — Bound moisture is liquid in a solid, which exerts a vapor pressure that is less than the pure liquid would do at the same temperature.
- boundary-stone — a stone marking a boundary, sometimes giving information such as the initials of the local authority in whose jurisdiction the boundary is
- bowstring hemp — a hemplike fibre obtained from the sansevieria
- boy-meets-girl — conventionally or trivially romantic