16-letter words containing y, e, i
- assembly routine — assembler (def 2a).
- at bayonet point — done while having a bayonet pointed at one
- at liberty to do — If someone is at liberty to do something, they have been given permission to do it.
- attorney-in-fact — a person authorized by power of attorney to act on the authorizer's behalf outside a court of law.
- auditory vesicle — the pouch that is formed by the invagination of an ectodermal placode and that develops into the internal ear.
- authority figure — a person whose real or apparent authority over others inspires or demands obedience and emulation: Parents, teachers, and police officers are traditional authority figures for children.
- autoregressively — In an autoregressive manner.
- auxiliary police — a part-time reserve attached to a regular police force
- auxiliary rafter — a rafter reinforcing a principal rafter.
- 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
- 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.
- babylonian exile — the exile of the Jews, deported by Nebuchadnezzar into Babylonia in 597 b.c. and permitted to return by Cyrus in 538 b.c.
- baltimore canyon — a submarine valley cut into the continental shelf and slope seaward of Chesapeake Bay.
- barbed tributary — a tributary that joins its mainstream in an upstream direction rather than in the more common downstream direction.
- barium hydroxide — a white poisonous crystalline solid, used in the manufacture of organic compounds and in the preparation of beet sugar. Formula: Ba(OH)2
- batesian mimicry — mimicry in which a harmless species is protected from predators by means of its resemblance to a harmful or inedible species
- bayonet practice — drill in the use of a bayonet
- bearish tendency — a tendency for share prices to fall
- beauty therapist — a person whose job is to carry out treatments to improve a person's appearance, such as facials, manicures, removal of unwanted hair, etc
- before your time — If you say that something was before your time, you mean that it happened or existed before you were born or before you were able to know about it or remember it.
- behavior therapy — therapy employing behavior modification
- benzoyl peroxide — a white, crystalline, water-insoluble, explosive solid, C 7 H 5 O 4 , used chiefly as a bleaching agent for flour, fats, oils, and waxes, and as a catalyst in polymerization reactions.
- berkeley edif200 — translator-building toolkit Wendell C. Baker and Prof A. Richard Newton of the Electronics Research Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. Version 7.6. Restriction: no-profit without permission.
- bertillon system — a system formerly in use for identifying persons, esp criminals, by means of a detailed record of physical characteristics
- beryllium copper — a copper alloy containing a small amount of beryllium and often some nickel or cobalt, having high strength, hardness, and electrical conductivity.
- bicyclic terpene — (originally) any of a class of monocyclic hydrocarbons of the formula C 10 H 16 , obtained from plants.
- bidirectionality — capable of reacting or functioning in two, usually opposite, directions.
- billy goat beard — a man's beard that is long under the chin and shaved elsewhere
- binary operation — a mathematical operation in which two elements are combined to yield a single result: Addition and multiplication are binary operations on the set of real numbers.
- binuclear family — a social unit composed of an extended family, usually the children and subsequent spouses of divorced parents.
- biodegradability — capable of decaying through the action of living organisms: biodegradable paper; biodegradable detergent.
- bird's-eye maple — a cut of sugar maple wood used especially for veneers, having a wavy grain with many dark, circular markings.
- birthday present — a gift given to someone on their birthday
- bite your tongue — either of the two fleshy parts or folds forming the margins of the mouth and functioning in speech.
- blue-ribbon jury — a jury composed of persons having more than ordinary education and presumably exceptional intelligence and perceptiveness, selected by the court on the motion of plaintiff or defendant to try cases of unusual complexity or importance.
- boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
- boutique brewery — microbrewery.
- bright and early — very early in the morning
- brittany spaniel — a short-tailed French bird dog that typically has a smooth orange- or liver-and-white coat
- broomrape family — the plant family Orobanchaceae, characterized by scaly, leafless herbaceous plants that are parasitic on the roots of other plants and have irregular flowers and many-seeded capsular fruit, and including beechdrops, broomrape, and squawroot.
- buckwheat family — the plant family Polygonaceae, characterized by herbaceous plants, vines, shrubs, and trees having stems with swollen joints, simple leaves, small, petalless flowers, and fruit in the form of an achene, and including the buckwheat, dock, knotweed, rhubarb, sea grape, and smartweed.
- building society — In Britain, a building society is a business which will lend you money when you want to buy a house. You can also invest money in a building society, where it will earn interest. Compare savings and loan association.
- bunker mentality — a defensive attitude in which others are seen as hostile or potentially hostile
- bunya-bunya pine — a tall dome-shaped Australian coniferous tree, Araucaria bidwillii, having edible cones (bunya nuts) and thickish flattened needles
- bureaucratically — of, relating to, or characteristic of a bureaucrat or a bureaucracy; arbitrary and routine.
- burgundy trefoil — alfalfa.
- burrowing blenny — graveldiver.
- business analyst — (job) A person who analyses the operations of a department or functional unit to develop a general systems solution to the problem. The solution will typically involve a combination of manual and automated processes. The business analyst can provide insights into an operation for an information systems analyst.
- buttercup family — the plant family Ranunculaceae, typified by mostly herbaceous plants having usually alternate leaves, multistaminate flowers sometimes lacking petals but with colorful sepals, and including the anemone, buttercup, clematis, columbine, delphinium, and monkshood.
- butterfly orchid — an orchid (Oncidium papilio) with reddish flowers, native to South America