15-letter words containing u, r, o
- barium chromate — a yellow, crystalline compound, BaCrO 4 , used as a pigment (barium yellow)
- barium peroxide — a gray-white powder, BaO2, used as a bleach and in making hydrogen peroxide
- barry mountains — a mountain range in SE Australia, in E Victoria: part of the Australian Alps
- basic autocoder — Early system on IBM 7070. Listed in CACM 2(5):16 (May 1959).
- be snowed under — to be overwhelmed, esp with paperwork
- beam-power tube — a vacuum tube in which the stream of electrons flowing to the plate is focused by the action of a set of auxiliary, charged elements, giving an increase in output power.
- beast of burden — A beast of burden is an animal such as an ox or a donkey that is used for carrying or pulling things.
- beetroot purple — a deep purple-red; a purple pigment derived from beets.
- benzyl fluoride — a colorless liquid, C 7 H 7 F, used in organic synthesis.
- bergius process — a method of hydrogenation formerly used with coal to produce an oil similar to petroleum.
- bernoulli trial — one of a sequence of independent experiments each of which has the same probability of success, such as successive throws of a die, the outcome of which is described by a binomial distribution
- beurre noisette — a sauce of butter cooked until golden or nut brown, sometimes flavored with capers, vinegar, herbs, etc.
- bicycle touring — the activity of touring on a bicycle
- bioastronautics — the study of the effects of space flight on living organisms
- biodestructible — biodegradable
- biscuit tortoni — an individual portion of tortoni, frozen and served in a small cup, often topped with ground almonds.
- black horehound — a hairy unpleasant-smelling chiefly Mediterranean plant, Ballota nigra, having clusters of purple flowers: family Lamiaceae (labiates)
- blockade runner — a person, ship etc that tries to carry goods through a blockade
- blockade-runner — a ship or person that passes through a blockade.
- blood corpuscle — one of the cells in the blood
- bloody butchers — a hardy plant, Trillium sessile, common from New York to Georgia and westward, having stalkless, purple or green flowers.
- blue wood aster — a composite plant, Aster cordifolius, of North America, having heart-shaped leaves and pale-blue flowers.
- bonheur-du-jour — a delicate fall-front desk of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
- booster cushion — an extra seat or cushion placed on an existing seat for a child to sit on in a car
- borough council — a local government body elected by a borough
- borough-english — (until 1925) a custom in certain English boroughs whereby the youngest son inherited land to the exclusion of his older brothers
- borscht circuit — summer resort hotels in the Catskills and White Mountains, where entertainment is provided for the guests
- bourbon biscuit — a rich chocolate-flavoured biscuit with a chocolate-cream filling
- boustrophedonic — of or relating to lines written in opposite directions
- bowstring truss — a structural truss consisting of a curved top chord meeting a bottom chord at each end.
- box huckleberry — a nearly prostrate evergreen huckleberry shrub, Gaylussacia brachycera, of central to eastern North America, having short clusters of white or pink flowers and blue fruit.
- brachystomatous — having a short proboscis, as certain insects.
- branchial pouch — one of a series of rudimentary outcroppings of the inner pharyngeal wall, corresponding to the branchial grooves on the surface.
- branchiostegous — branchiostegal.
- breach of trust — a violation of duty by a trustee or any other person in a fiduciary position
- break the mould — If you say that someone breaks the mould, you mean that they do completely different things from what has been done before or from what is usually done.
- break-out group — a group of people who detach themselves from a larger group or meeting in order to hold separate discussions
- breaking plough — a plough with a long shallow mouldboard for turning virgin land or sod land
- breeding ground — If you refer to a situation or place as a breeding ground for something bad such as crime, you mean that this thing can easily develop in that situation or place.
- british council — an organization founded (1934) to extend the influence of British culture and education throughout the world
- bronchial tubes — the bronchi or their smaller divisions
- brussels sprout — Brussels sprouts are vegetables that look like tiny cabbages.
- bucket conveyor — a conveyor consisting of an endless chain with a series of buckets attached at regular intervals, used for moving ore, gravel, grain, or other bulk materials.
- bucket elevator — a chain of buckets for raising liquids or materials to a higher level
- buffalo currant — an ornamental shrub, Ribes odoratum, of the central U.S., having showy, drooping clusters of fragrant yellow flowers and edible black fruit.
- buffalo soldier — (formerly, especially among American Indians) a black soldier.
- buffer overflow — (programming) What happens when you try to store more data in a buffer than it can handle. This may be due to a mismatch in the processing rates of the producing and consuming processes (see overrun and firehose syndrome), or because the buffer is simply too small to hold all the data that must accumulate before a piece of it can be processed. For example, in a text-processing tool that crunches a line at a time, a short line buffer can result in lossage as input from a long line overflows the buffer and overwrites data beyond it. Good defensive programming would check for overflow on each character and stop accepting data when the buffer is full. See also spam, overrun screw.
- buffer solution — a solution to which a salt of a weak acid or base has been added
- bughouse square — Informal. any intersection or park mall in a big city where political zealots, agitators, folk evangelists, etc., congregate to argue and make soapbox speeches.
- building worker — a labourer, bricklayer, etc who works in the construction industry