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16-letter words containing s

  • autoregressively — In an autoregressive manner.
  • autostereoscopic — Of or pertaining to autostereoscopy.
  • autotransformers — Plural form of autotransformer.
  • autotransfusions — Plural form of autotransfusion.
  • avail oneself of — to make use of to one's advantage
  • avalon peninsula — a large peninsula of Newfoundland, between Trinity and Placentia Bays. Area: about 10 000 sq km (4000 sq miles)
  • average adjuster — a person who calculates average claims, esp for marine insurance
  • aversion therapy — a method of suppressing an undesirable habit, such as excessive smoking, by causing the subject to associate an unpleasant effect, such as an electric shock or nausea, with the habit
  • away from sb/sth — If something is away from a person or place, it is at a distance from that person or place.
  • axis of symmetry — Mathematics. a straight line for which every point on a given curve has corresponding to it another point such that the line connecting the two points is bisected by the given line.
  • axminster carpet — a type of patterned carpet with a cut pile
  • azuero peninsula — a peninsula in SW Panama, bordered on the E by the Gulf of Panama.
  • babbage, charles — Charles Babbage
  • bachelor of arts — a degree conferred on a person who has successfully completed his or her undergraduate studies, usually in a branch of the liberal arts or humanities
  • bachelor-at-arms — bachelor (def 4).
  • back-seat driver — If you refer to a passenger in a car as a back-seat driver, they annoy you because they constantly give you advice.
  • background music — music of any kind that is played while some other activity is going on, so that people do not actively attend to it
  • background noise — any type of noise that is not the sound that you are specifically listening to or monitoring
  • backus-naur form — (language, grammar)   (BNF, originally "Backus Normal Form") A formal metasyntax used to express context-free grammars. Backus Normal Form was renamed Backus-Naur Form at the suggestion of Donald Knuth. BNF is one of the most commonly used metasyntactic notations for specifying the syntax of programming languages, command sets, and the like. It is widely used for language descriptions but seldom documented anywhere (how do you document a metasyntax?), so that it must usually be learned by osmosis (but see RFC 2234). Consider this BNF for a US postal address: ::= ::= | "." ::= [] | ::= [] ::= "," This translates into English as: "A postal-address consists of a name-part, followed by a street-address part, followed by a zip-code part. A personal-part consists of either a first name or an initial followed by a dot. A name-part consists of either: a personal-part followed by a last name followed by an optional "jr-part" (Jr., Sr., or dynastic number) and end-of-line, or a personal part followed by a name part (this rule illustrates the use of recursion in BNFs, covering the case of people who use multiple first and middle names and/or initials). A street address consists of an optional apartment specifier, followed by a street number, followed by a street name. A zip-part consists of a town-name, followed by a comma, followed by a state code, followed by a ZIP-code followed by an end-of-line." Note that many things (such as the format of a personal-part, apartment specifier, or ZIP-code) are left unspecified. These lexical details are presumed to be obvious from context or specified somewhere nearby. There are many variants and extensions of BNF, possibly containing some or all of the regexp wild cards such as "*" or "+". EBNF is a common one. In fact the example above isn't the pure form invented for the ALGOL 60 report. "[]" was introduced a few years later in IBM's PL/I definition but is now universally recognised. ABNF is another extension.
  • bahasa indonesia — the official language of Indonesia: developed from the form of Malay formerly widely used as a trade language in SE Asia
  • balance transfer — the act of transferring debt from one credit card to another, assuming that the second card has better terms or interest rates than the first
  • balearic islands — a group of islands in the W Mediterranean, consisting of Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza, Formentera, Cabrera, and 11 islets: a province of Spain. Capital: Palma, on Majorca. Pop: 1 071 500 (2003 est). Area: 5012 sq km (1935 sq miles)
  • balkan mountains — a mountain range extending across Bulgaria from the Black Sea to the eastern border. Highest peak: Mount Botev, 2376 m (7793 ft)
  • balkan peninsula — a large peninsula in SE Europe, between the Adriatic and Aegean Seas
  • ballast resistor — ballast (def 5a).
  • ballast-resistor — Nautical. any heavy material carried temporarily or permanently in a vessel to provide desired draft and stability.
  • ballistic camera — a camera for tracking missiles launched at night.
  • balsamic vinegar — Balsamic vinegar is a type of vinegar which tastes sweet and is made from grape juice.
  • baluster measure — an antique liquid measure usually made of pewter, having a concave top on a convex base.
  • banana republics — any of the small countries in the tropics, especially in the Western Hemisphere, whose economies are largely dependent on fruit exports, tourism, and foreign investors.
  • band-pass filter — a filter that transmits only those currents having a frequency lying within specified limits
  • banned substance — In sport, banned substances are drugs that competitors are not allowed to take because they could artificially improve their performance.
  • barbecue stopper — a controversial current-affairs issue
  • bare necessities — only the essentials
  • bargain basement — If you refer to something as a bargain basement thing, you mean that it is cheap and not very good quality.
  • bargain-basement — very low-priced.
  • bargaining scope — the range of topics within the scope of a particular set of negotiations leading to a collective agreement
  • baron tweedsmuir — the title of Scottish novelist John Buchan
  • barrier of ideas — the representations of objects which certain accounts of perception interpose between the objects themselves and our awareness of them, so that, as critics argue, we can never know whether there is in reality anything which resembles our perceptions
  • bartholomeu dias — Bartholomeu [bahr-too-loo-me-oo] /ˌbɑr tʊ lʊˈmɛ ʊ/ (Show IPA), c1450–1500, Portuguese navigator: discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope.
  • basal anesthesia — anesthesia induced as a preliminary to further and deeper anesthesia
  • basal metabolism — the amount of energy required by an individual in the resting state, for such functions as breathing and circulation of the blood
  • basement complex — the undifferentiated assemblage of rock (basement rock) underlying the oldest stratified rocks in any region: usually crystalline, metamorphosed, and mostly, but not necessarily, Precambrian in age.
  • bashkir republic — a constituent republic of E central Russia, in the S Urals: established as the first Soviet autonomous republic in 1919; rich mineral resources. Capital: Ufa. Pop: 4 012 900 (2002). Area: 143 600 sq km (55 430 sq miles)
  • basic curriculum — in England and Wales, the National Curriculum plus religious education
  • basic dichromate — an orange-red, amorphous, water-insoluble powder, Bi 2 O 3 ⋅2CrO 3 , used chiefly as a pigment in paints.
  • basic vocabulary — the set of lexical items in a language that are most resistant to replacement, referring to the most common and universal elements of human experience, such as parts of the body (foot, eye), universal features of the environment (water, star), common activities (eat, sleep), and the lowest numerals.
  • basilar membrane — a membrane inside the cochlea that vibrates in response to sound
  • basque provinces — an autonomous region of N Spain, comprising the provinces of Álava, Guipúzcoa, and Vizcaya: inhabited mainly by Basques, who retained virtual autonomy from the 9th to the 19th century. Pop: 1 840 700 (2003 est). Area: about 7250 sq km (2800 sq miles)
  • bastard culverin — a 16th-century cannon, smaller than a culverin, firing a shot of between 5 and 8 pounds (11 and 17.6 kg).
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