13-letter words containing t, a, b, l
- bacteriolysis — the destruction or disintegration of bacteria
- bacteriolytic — disintegration or dissolution of bacteria.
- bakewell tart — an open tart having a pastry base and a layer of jam and filled with almond-flavoured sponge cake
- balance shaft — a shaft in a vehicle engine that is designed to reduce the amount of vibration from other moving parts as it rotates
- balance sheet — A balance sheet is a written statement of the amount of money and property that a company or person has, including amounts of money that are owed or are owing. Balance sheet is also used to refer to the general financial state of a company.
- balance staff — a pivoted axle or shaft on which the balance is mounted.
- balanced diet — a diet consisting of the proper quantities and proportions of foods needed to maintain health or growth.
- balanced step — any of a series of staircase winders so planned that they are nearly as wide at the inside of the stair as the adjacent fliers.
- balanced tree — (algorithm) An optimisation of a tree which aims to keep equal numbers of items on each subtree of each node so as to minimise the maximum path from the root to any leaf node. As items are inserted and deleted, the tree is restructured to keep the nodes balanced and the search paths uniform. Such an algorithm is appropriate where the overheads of the reorganisation on update are outweighed by the benefits of faster search. A B-tree is a kind of balanced tree that can have more than two subtrees at each node (i.e. one that is not restricted to being a binary tree).
- balancing act — If you perform a balancing act, you try to deal successfully with two or more people, groups, or situations that are in opposition to each other.
- balkan states — the countries of the Balkan Peninsula: the former Yugoslavian Republics, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, and the European part of Turkey
- balkanization — If you disapprove of the division of a country into separate independent states, you can refer to the Balkanization of the country.
- ball the jack — a spherical or approximately spherical body or shape; sphere: He rolled the piece of paper into a ball.
- ballad stanza — a four-line stanza, often used in ballads, in which the second and fourth lines rhyme and have three stresses each and the first and third lines are unrhymed and have four stresses each
- ballet dancer — a man or woman who takes part in ballet dancing, usually professionally
- ballet lesson — a class in which ballet is taught
- ballet master — a man who teaches and rehearses the dancers in a ballet company
- ballet school — a school where professional ballet dancers are trained
- ballistically — of or relating to ballistics.
- ballistospore — a spore, esp a fungal spore, that is forcefully ejected from its source
- balneotherapy — the treatment of disease by bathing, esp to improve limb mobility in arthritic and neuromuscular disorders
- baltic shield — the wide area of ancient rock in Scandinavia
- baltic states — the republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which became constituent republics of the former Soviet Union in 1940, regaining their independence in 1991
- baluster stem — a stem of a drinking glass or the like having a gradual swelling near the top or bottom.
- bamboozlement — The act or process of bamboozling or being bamboozled.
- barcoo salute — a movement of the hand to brush flies away from the face
- baritone clef — an F clef locating F below middle C on the third line of the staff.
- barley stripe — a disease of barley, characterized by blighted heads and chlorotic, brown, or frayed stripes on the leaves, caused by a fungus, Helminthosporium gramineum.
- baroclinicity — a common state of fluid stratification in which surfaces of constant pressure and others of constant density are not parallel but intersect.
- barrel cactus — any of several large, cylindrical, ribbed, spiny cacti of the genera Echinocactus and Ferocactus.
- bartholinitis — Inflammation of Bartholin's cyst.
- bartholomew i — (Dimitrios Archontonis) born 1940, Archbishop of Constantinople and Ecumenical Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church since 1991.
- bartlett pear — a large, juicy variety of pear
- barytocalcite — a mineral, double carbonate of calcium and barium, CaCO 3 ⋅BaCO 3 , usually found in veins of lead minerals.
- base hospital — a hospital serving a large rural area
- baseline cost — the projected cost for an undertaking at the time it is budgeted
- basement flat — a flat below the ground floor of a building
- basket clause — an all-inclusive or comprehensive clause in a contract
- basket flower — a composite plant, Centaurea americana, of central U.S. to Mexico, having raylike heads of tubular rose-colored flowers, each surrounded by a whorl of bracts making the flower head appear as if it is set in a basket.
- bass clarinet — a clarinet with the lowest range, in the octave below the B-flat clarinet
- bastard title — half title (def 1).
- bastard-title — Also called bastard title. the first printed page of certain books, appearing after the end papers and before the title page and containing only the title of the book.
- batan islands — a group of islands in the Philippines, north of Luzon. Capital: Basco. Pop: 16 467 (2000). Area: 197 sq km (76 sq miles)
- bathylimnetic — (of an organism) living in the depths of lakes and marshes
- baton twirler — someone who twirls a baton, esp a drum major or majorette
- battle it out — If one group or person battles it out with another, they take part in a fight or contest against each other until one of them wins or a definite result is reached. You can also say that two groups or two people battle it out.
- battle jacket — a closefitting jacket reaching to the waist
- battlecruiser — A large warship of a type built in the early 20th century, carrying similar armament to a battleship but faster and more lightly armored.
- battlegrounds — Plural form of battleground.
- bay of plenty — a large bay of the Pacific on the NE coast of the North Island, New Zealand