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17-letter words containing b

  • board of estimate — a special organ of a municipal government, as of New York City, composed of the mayor, the president of the city council, and the controller, and charged with approving the city's budget and fiscal matters.
  • board of managers — a group of people responsible for managing an organization
  • board of trustees — a governing board which directs the policies of an educational institution
  • board-and-shingle — a small dwelling with wooden walls and a shingle roof
  • 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
  • boatswain's chair — a seat consisting of a short flat board slung from ropes, used to support a person working on the side of a vessel or in its rigging
  • 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.
  • body modification — any method of permanently adorning the body, including tattooing and piercing
  • boeuf bourguignon — a casserole of beef, vegetables, herbs, etc, cooked in red wine
  • bohemian brethren — a Protestant Christian sect formed in the 15th century from various Hussite groups, which rejected oaths and military service and advocated a pure and disciplined spiritual life. It was reorganized in 1722 as the Moravian Church
  • boileau-despreaux — Nicolas [nee-kaw-lah] /ni kɔˈlɑ/ (Show IPA), 1636–1711, French critic and poet.
  • boiler horsepower — a unit of measurement of the ability of a boiler to evaporate water, usually given as the ability to evaporate 34½ pounds (15.6 kg) of water an hour, into dry saturated steam from and at 212°F (100°C).
  • 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
  • bond immunization — immunization (def 2).
  • bone marrow donor — a person who donates bone marrow
  • book depreciation — Book depreciation is depreciation in a company's internal financial records that is different from the amount that is used for taxes.
  • 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
  • bore-stroke ratio — The bore-stroke ratio is the ratio of bore to stroke. A ratio of 1:1 is referred to informally as square.
  • bottlebrush grass — a North American grass, Hystrix patula, having loose flower spikes with long awns.
  • bottom-up testing — (programming)   An integration testing technique that tests the low-level components first using test drivers for those components that have not yet been developed to call the low-level components for test. Compare bottom-up implementation.
  • boulder raspberry — a shrub, Rubus deliciosus, of Colorado, having large white flowers and purple fruit.
  • bouncebackability — the ability to recover after a setback, esp in sport
  • bow street runner — (in Britain from 1749 to 1829) an officer at Bow Street magistrates' court, London, whose duty was to pursue and arrest criminals
  • bowel obstruction — a blockage in the bowel
  • boys will be boys — If you say boys will be boys, for example when a group of men are behaving noisily or aggressively, you are suggesting in a light-hearted way that this is typical male behaviour and will never change.
  • bradford spinning — a wool-spinning method in which the fibers are oiled prior to combing and subsequently spun into worsted yarn.
  • brain haemorrhage — bleeding into the brain
  • branch delay slot — delayed control-transfer
  • branch prediction — (processor, algorithm)   A technique used in some processors with instruction prefetch to guess whether a conditional branch will be taken or not and prefetch code from the appropriate location. When a branch instruction is executed, its address and that of the next instruction executed (the chosen destination of the branch) are stored in the Branch Target Buffer. This information is used to predict which way the instruction will branch the next time it is executed so that instruction prefetch can continue. When the prediction is correct (and it is over 90% of the time), executing a branch does not cause a pipeline break. Some later CPUs simply prefetch both paths instead of trying to predict which way the branch will go. An extension of the idea of branch prediction is speculative execution.
  • brazilian emerald — a green variety of tourmaline used as a gem: not a true emerald.
  • brazilian peridot — a light yellowish-green tourmaline used as a gem: not a true peridot.
  • brazilian rhatany — See under rhatany (def 1).
  • breach of promise — (formerly) failure to carry out one's promise to marry
  • break one's heart — to grieve or cause to grieve very deeply, esp through love
  • break the back of — to complete the greatest or hardest part of (a task)
  • breakdown service — a service that provides assistance to motorists who break down
  • breakdown voltage — the minimum applied voltage that would cause a given insulator or electrode to break down.
  • breathe life into — revive, rejuvenate
  • brezhnev doctrine — the doctrine expounded by Leonid Brezhnev in November 1968 affirming the right of the Soviet Union to intervene in the affairs of Communist countries to strengthen Communism.
  • bricks and clicks — a combination of traditional business carried out on physical premises and internet trading
  • bricks and mortar — You can use bricks and mortar to refer to houses and other buildings, especially when they are considered as an investment.
  • brigadier general — In the United States, a brigadier general is a senior officer in the armed forces who is often in charge of a brigade and has a rank above colonel and below major general.
  • brightening agent — a compound applied to a textile to increase its brightness by the conversion of ultraviolet radiation to visible (blue) light, used in detergents
  • brighton and hove — a city and unitary authority in S England, in East Sussex. Pop: 251 500 (2003 est). Area: 72 sq km (28 sq miles)
  • bring up the rear — to be at the back in a procession, race, etc
  • british cameroons — a former British trust territory of West Africa
  • british columbian — of or relating to British Columbia or its inhabitants
  • british israelite — a member of a religious movement claiming that the British people are descended from the lost tribes of Israel
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