14-letter words containing t, p
- baltimore chop — a batted ball that takes a high bounce upon hitting the ground on or immediately in front of home plate, often enabling the batter to reach first base safely.
- bancroft prize — one of a group of annual awards for literary achievement in American history and biography: administered by Columbia University.
- baptismal font — a large bowl for baptismal water, usually mounted on a pedestal
- baptismal name — Christian name (def 1).
- baptismal vows — the solemn promises made during baptism, either by the person baptized or by his or her sponsors
- barometrograph — barograph.
- base component — the system of rules in a transformational grammar that specify the deep structure of the language
- bathygraphical — (of a maps) representing the contours of the seabed
- batrachophobia — fear of amphibians
- batrachophobic — relating to the fear of toads and frogs
- battery backup — A battery backup is a system in some power supplies that switches between a main power source and a battery.
- be in the loop — If someone is in the loop, they are part of a group of people who make decisions about important things, or they know about these decisions. If they are out of the loop, they do not make or know about important decisions.
- be in the pink — If you are in the pink, you are fit, healthy, and happy.
- beauty pageant — A beauty pageant is the same as a beauty contest.
- beauty parlour — A beauty parlour is a place where women can go to have beauty treatments, for example to have their hair, nails or make-up done.
- beta-endorphin — a potent endorphin released by the anterior pituitary gland in response to pain, trauma, exercise, or other forms of stress.
- beyond dispute — not open to dispute or question; settled
- bible-thumping — an evangelist or other person who quotes the Bible frequently, especially as a means of exhortation or rebuke.
- bioprospecting — searching for plant or animal species for use as a source of commercially exploitable products, such as medicinal drugs
- bipartisanship — representing, characterized by, or including members from two parties or factions: Government leaders hope to achieve a bipartisan foreign policy.
- bipolarisation — the act of bipolarising
- bipolarization — the action of rendering something bipolar
- birthday party — a party to celebrate someone's birthday
- bishop's mitre — a European heteropterous bug, Aelia acuminata, whose larvae are a pest of cereal grasses: family Pentatomidae
- bisphosphonate — any drug of a class that inhibits the resorption of bone; used in treating certain bone disorders, esp osteoporosis
- bite one's lip — If you bite your lip or your tongue, you stop yourself from saying something that you want to say, because it would be the wrong thing to say in the circumstances.
- bitmap display — (hardware) A computer output device where each pixel displayed on the monitor screen corresponds directly to one or more bits in the computer's video memory. Such a display can be updated extremely rapidly since changing a pixel involves only a single processor write to memory compared with a terminal or VDU connected via a serial line where the speed of the serial line limits the speed at which the display can be changed. Most modern personal computers and workstations have bitmap displays, allowing the efficient use of graphical user interfaces, interactive graphics and a choice of on-screen fonts. Some more expensive systems still delegate graphics operations to dedicated hardware such as graphics accelerators. The bitmap display might be traced back to the earliest days of computing when the Manchester University Mark I(?) computer, developed by F.C. Williams and T. Kilburn shortly after the Second World War. This used a storage tube as its working memory. Phosphor dots were used to store single bits of data which could be read by the user and interpreted as binary numbers.
- 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.
- black panthers — (in the US) a militant Black political party founded in 1965 to end the political dominance of White people
- blacktip shark — a widely distributed sand shark, Charcharinus limbatus, having fins that appear to have been dipped in ink, inhabiting shallow waters of warm seas.
- blaxploitation — a genre of films featuring Black stereotypes
- blepharoplasty — cosmetic surgery performed on the eyelid
- bletchley park — the Buckinghamshire estate which was the centre of British code-breaking operations during World War II
- blind stamping — an impression on a book cover without using colour or gold leaf
- 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
- block capitals — Block capitals are simple capital letters that are not decorated in any way.
- block printing — printing from hand engraved or carved blocks of wood or linoleum
- blood platelet — any of the minute, disklike, colorless elements of the blood that are essential for normal clotting
- blotting paper — Blotting paper is thick soft paper that you use for soaking up and drying ink on a piece of paper.
- blow one's top — to lose one's temper
- boarding party — group of officers or sailors who board a ship
- body corporate — a group of persons incorporated to carry out a specific enterprise
- bophuthatswana — (formerly) a Bantu homeland in N South Africa: consisted of six separate areas; declared independent by South Africa in 1977 although this was not internationally recognized; abolished in 1993. Capital: Mmabatho
- border dispute — a disagreement between countries about where the border between them should be drawn
- bottling plant — a factory where drinks are bottled
- bottomless pit — If you describe a supply of something as bottomless, you mean that it seems so large that it will never run out.
- bowstring hemp — a hemplike fibre obtained from the sansevieria
- bread poultice — a poultice made from breadcrumbs
- breaking point — If something or someone has reached breaking point, they have so many problems or difficulties that they can no longer cope with them, and may soon collapse or be unable to continue.