14-letter words containing e
- biomathematics — the study of the application of mathematics to biology
- biometeorology — the study of the effect of weather conditions on living organisms
- biometric risk — Biometric risk covers all risks related to human life conditions, such as death, birth, disability, age, and number of children.
- bioprospecting — searching for plant or animal species for use as a source of commercially exploitable products, such as medicinal drugs
- bioregionalism — the conviction that environmental and social policies should be determined by the bioregion rather than economics or politics
- bioregionalist — someone who believes in bioregionalism
- bioremediation — the use of plants to extract heavy metals from contaminated soils and water
- biosystematics — the study of the variation and evolution of a population of organisms in relation to their taxonomic classification
- biosystematist — someone who studies or works professionally in the field of biosystematics
- bircher muesli — a type of muesli containing softened oats, dried fruit, and apple
- birdcage clock — lantern clock.
- birds and bees — any warm-blooded vertebrate of the class Aves, having a body covered with feathers, forelimbs modified into wings, scaly legs, a beak, and no teeth, and bearing young in a hard-shelled egg.
- biscuit barrel — an airtight container of circular section equipped with a lid and used for storing biscuits
- bishop's mitre — a European heteropterous bug, Aelia acuminata, whose larvae are a pest of cereal grasses: family Pentatomidae
- bishops' bible — an English translation of the Bible made under the direction of Matthew Parker and published in 1568: the recognized translation of the Bible in England until the Authorized (King James) Version of 1611.
- bisphosphonate — any drug of a class that inhibits the resorption of bone; used in treating certain bone disorders, esp osteoporosis
- bit error rate — A bit error rate is the measure of the number of incorrect bits that can be expected in a specified number of bits in a serial stream.
- 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.
- 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.
- bitter cassava — a species of cassava (Manihot esculenta) whose poisonous roots when processed yield tapioca starch
- black and blue — discolored, as by bruising; exhibiting ecchymosis: a black-and-blue mark on my knee.
- black basaltes — basaltware.
- black bindweed — a twining polygonaceous European plant, Polygonum convolvulus, with heart-shaped leaves and triangular black seed pods
- black bullhead — a common freshwater catfish, Ictalurus melas, of North America, considered by some to be a food delicacy.
- black mulberry — a small deciduous tree, Morus nigra, with small leaves, producing edible fruit
- black panthers — (in the US) a militant Black political party founded in 1965 to end the political dominance of White people
- black redstart — a small, Passerine bird, Phoenicurus ochruros, found in Central and S Europe
- black sea bass — an American coastal percoid fish, Centropristes striatus, having an elongated body with a long spiny dorsal fin almost divided into two
- black selenium — an allotropic form of selenium occurring as a black, amorphous, water-insoluble, light-sensitive powder: used chiefly in photoelectric cells.
- black squirrel — a fox squirrel or gray squirrel in that color phase in which the fur is black.
- black-and-blue — (of the skin) discoloured, as from a bruise
- black-eyed pea — Black-eyed peas are beige seeds with black marks that are eaten as a vegetable. They are from a plant called the cowpea.
- bladder cancer — any cancer of the bladder
- bladder ketmia — plant with pale yellow flowers
- bladder ketmie — flower-of-an-hour
- blade-shearing — the shearing of sheep using hand shears
- blanket finish — a finish so close that a blanket would cover all the contestants involved
- blanket stitch — a strong reinforcing stitch for the edges of blankets and other thick material
- blanket-flower — any composite plant of the genus Gaillardia, having showy heads of yellow or red flowers.
- blanket-stitch — a basic sewing stitch in which widely spaced, interlocking loops, or purls, are formed, used for cutwork, as a decorative finish for edges, etc.
- blankety-blank — damned
- blantyre-limbe — a city in S Malawi: largest city in the country; formed in 1956 from the adjoining towns of Blantyre and Limbe. Pop: 647 000 (2005 est)
- bleat on about — If you say that someone is bleating on about something, you mean that they are talking about it a great deal in a way which makes them sound weak and irritating.
- bleeding heart — If you describe someone as a bleeding heart, you are criticizing them for being sympathetic towards people who are poor and suffering, without doing anything practical to help.
- blended family — a social unit consisting of two previously married parents and the children of their former marriages
- blepharoplasty — cosmetic surgery performed on the eyelid
- blessed virgin — the Virgin Mary
- bletchley park — the Buckinghamshire estate which was the centre of British code-breaking operations during World War II
- bletheranskate — a blatherer
- blind register — (in the United Kingdom) a list of those who are blind and are therefore entitled to financial and other benefits