17-letter words containing t, e, l, b
- be just sb's luck — If you say it is just your luck that something unpleasant has happened to you, you mean that this is quite normal because unpleasant things are always happening to you.
- be over the limit — If someone is over the limit, they have drunk more alcohol than they are legally allowed to when driving a vehicle.
- be well out of it — If you say to someone who is no longer involved in a situation that they are well out of it, you mean that it is a good thing they are no longer involved and they should be pleased about this.
- beauty specialist — a person who helps someone to improve their beauty, such as a make-up artist
- beer and skittles — enjoyment or pleasure
- believe it or not — You can use believe it or not to emphasize that what you have just said is surprising.
- bell laboratories — One of AT&T's research sites, in Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA. It was the birthplace of the transistor, Unix, C and C++ and the current home of research on Plan 9 and ODE.
- bell-hanger's bit — a bit for drilling small holes through studs or the like.
- belted kingfisher — a grayish-blue, North American kingfisher, Ceryle alcyon, having a white breast marked with a grayish-blue band.
- benefit of clergy — sanction by the church
- benevolent sexism — a theory that sexism toward women is multidimensional, one form (hostile sexism) reflecting negative views of women who challenge traditional gender roles, and the other form (benevolent sexism) reflecting positive views of women who conform to these roles.
- benoit mandelbrot — (person) /ben'wa man'dl-bro/ Benoit B. Mandelbrot. The IBM scientist who wrote several original books on fractals and gave his name to the set he was discovered, the Mandelbrot set and coined the term "fractal" in 1975 from the Latin fractus or "to break".
- betagalactosidase — any of a family of enzymes capable of liberating galactose from carbohydrates.
- between ourselves — in confidence; as a secret
- bicycle motocross — a bicycle race over a rough cross-country course, usually consisting of jumps, obstacles, and turns. Abbreviation: BMX.
- bill of adventure — a certificate made out by a merchant to show that goods handled by him and his agents are the property of another party at whose risk the dealing is done
- bill of attainder — (formerly) a legislative act finding a person guilty without trial of treason or felony and declaring him attainted
- billeting officer — an officer who is responsible for billeting
- binet-simon scale — a test comprising questions and tasks, used to determine the mental age of subjects, usually children
- bioelectrogenesis — the production of electricity by organisms.
- biological father — the man whose semen fertilized the ovum from which a child was born
- biological mother — the mother who gave birth to a child
- biological parent — a parent who has conceived (biological mother) or sired (biological father) rather than adopted a child and whose genes are therefore transmitted to the child.
- biopharmaceutical — of or relating to drugs produced using biotechnology
- bitmapped display — bitmap display
- bitter almond oil — almond oil (def 2).
- bitter-almond-oil — Also called sweet almond oil, expressed almond oil. a colorless to pale yellow fatty oil expressed from the seeds of the sweet almond, used in preparing perfumes and confections.
- black forest cake — a torte consisting typically of thin layers of chocolate cake spread with alternating layers of chocolate, cherry, and whipped-cream filling and covered with whipped cream
- black-box testing — functional testing
- black-tailed deer — a variety of mule deer, Odocoileus hemionus columbianus, of the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, having a tail that is black above.
- black-water fever — a form of babesiosis seen in cattle, deer, bison, water buffalo, African buffalo, and reindeer; characterized by fever, depression, jaundice, dark red-black discolouration of the urine, anaemia, and death
- blank endorsement — an endorsement on a bill of exchange, cheque, etc, naming no payee and thus making the endorsed sum payable to the bearer
- blessed sacrament — the consecrated elements of the Eucharist
- block coefficient — the ratio of the immersed volume of a vessel to the product of its immersed draft, length, and beam.
- blood and thunder — A blood and thunder performer or performance is very loud and emotional.
- blood cholesterol — a measurement of the amount of cholesterol in someone's blood
- blood-and-thunder — sensationalism, violence, or exaggerated melodrama: a movie full of blood and thunder.
- blood-drop emlets — a Chilean scrophulariaceous plant, Mimulus luteus, naturalized in Europe, having red-spotted yellow flowers
- blowout preventer — A blowout preventer is a valve that can be closed when there is uncontrolled flow of fluids.
- blue dog democrat — a fiscally conservative member of the Democratic Party
- blue dot syndrome — (graphics, jargon) The inability to display an image file or text embedded in an image file on your monitor.
- blue sky software — eHelp Corporation
- blue-sky thinking — Blue-sky thinking is the activity of trying to find completely new ideas.
- bluegrass country — region in central Ky. where there is much bluegrass
- boat-billed heron — a nocturnal, tropical American wading bird (Cochlearius cochlearius) with a large, broad bill: it is the only member of a family (Cochleariidae) of wading birds
- body center plate — one of a pair of plates that fit together and support the body of a car on a truck, while allowing the truck to rotate with respect to the body. One plate (body center plate) is attached to the underside of the car body and the other (truck center plate) is part of the car truck.
- bombardier beetle — any of various small carabid beetles of the genus Brachinus, esp B. crepitans of Europe, which defend themselves by ejecting a jet of volatile fluid
- boolean operation — any operation in which each of the operands and the result take one of two values.
- boothia peninsula — a peninsula of N Canada: the northernmost part of the mainland of North America, lying west of the Gulf of Boothia, an arm of the Arctic Ocean
- boots and saddles — a bugle call formerly used in the US Cavalry to summon soldiers to mount