16-letter words containing y, e, n
- armed neutrality — military preparedness without commitment, especially as the expressed policy of a neutral nation in wartime; readiness to counter with force an invasion of rights by any belligerent power.
- as likely as not — very probably
- ascending rhythm — rising rhythm.
- assembly routine — assembler (def 2a).
- astronomer royal — an honorary title awarded to an eminent British astronomer: until 1972, the Astronomer Royal was also director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory
- at bayonet point — done while having a bayonet pointed at one
- attorney general — A country's Attorney General is its chief law officer, who advises its government or ruler.
- attorney-in-fact — a person authorized by power of attorney to act on the authorizer's behalf outside a court of law.
- 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
- 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.
- bankruptcy order — a court order appointing a receiver to manage the property of a debtor or bankrupt
- batesian mimicry — mimicry in which a harmless species is protected from predators by means of its resemblance to a harmful or inedible species
- batlle y ordonez — José [haw-se] /hɔˈsɛ/ (Show IPA), 1856–1929, Uruguayan statesman: president of Uruguay 1903–07, 1911–15.
- bayonet practice — drill in the use of a bayonet
- bearish tendency — a tendency for share prices to fall
- beauty treatment — the use of some form of treatment to improve someone's beauty such as a facial, manicure or depilation
- 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 network — (B-NET) Top level Unix Ethernet software developed at the University of California at Berkeley. There are no formal specifications but UCB's 4.2BSD Unix implementation on the VAX is the de facto standard. Distributed by Unisoft. Includes net.o driver routines for specific hardware, pseudo ttys, daemons, hostname command to set/get name, /etc/hosts database of names and Internet addresses of other hosts, /etc/hosts.equiv host-wide database to control remote access, .rhosts per user version of hosts.equiv. UCB's implementation of the Internet Protocol includes trailers to improve performance on paged memory management systems such as VAXen. These trailers are an exception to the Internet Protocol specification.
- bertillon system — a system formerly in use for identifying persons, esp criminals, by means of a detailed record of physical characteristics
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- black-eyed susan — any of several North American plants of the genus Rudbeckia, esp R. hirta, having flower heads of orange-yellow rays and brown-black centres: family Asteraceae (composites)
- blocked currency — a currency that is not freely convertible because of exchange controls imposed on it
- 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.
- bob's your uncle — everything is or will turn out all right
- boston tea party — a raid in 1773 made by citizens of Boston (disguised as Indians) on three British ships in the harbour as a protest against taxes on tea and the monopoly given to the East India Company. The contents of several hundred chests of tea were dumped into the harbour
- boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
- brandy alexander — an Alexander cocktail made with brandy
- 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
- brown-eyed susan — a composite plant, Rudbeckia triloba, of the southeastern U.S., having a single flower with yellow rays darkening to an orange orbrown at the base and a brownish-black disk.
- buckley's chance — no chance at all
- 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
- buoyancy chamber — an enclosed section of a canoe, float, ship or other object that contains air, foam, or another buoyant substance in order to help maintain buoyancy
- burgundy trefoil — alfalfa.
- burrowing blenny — graveldiver.
- bury st. edmunds — a city in W Suffolk, in E England: medieval shrine.
- bush honeysuckle — any of several shrubs of the genus Diervilla, of eastern North America, having clusters of yellowish flowers.
- 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.
- buying behaviour — the behaviours displayed by consumers when they purchase things, such as preferences, price points, etc
- bypass operation — an operation involving redirection of blood flow, either to avoid a diseased blood vessel or in order to perform heart surgery
- byzantine church — Orthodox Church (def 1).
- byzantine empire — the continuation of the Roman Empire in the East, esp after the deposition of the last emperor in Rome (476 ad). It was finally extinguished by the fall of Constantinople, its capital, in 1453