12-letter words containing st
- bastinadoing — Present participle of bastinado.
- beautifulest — (dated) Most beautiful; more beautiful than anyone or anything else.
- beauty strip — a narrow forest corridor left uncut alongside a road or body of water.
- beaver state — Oregon (used as a nickname).
- belly-buster — belly flop.
- below stairs — People sometimes use below stairs to refer to the servants in a rich household and the things that are connected with them.
- best in show — an award to the dog, cat, or other animal judged best of all breeds in a competition.
- best-selling — A best-selling product such as a book is very popular and a large quantity of it has been sold.
- beta testing — (programming) Evaluation of a pre-release (potentially unreliable) version of a piece of software (or possibly hardware) by making it available to selected users ("beta testers") before it goes on general distribution. Beta testign aims to discover bugs that only occur in certain environments or under certain patterns of use, while reducing the volume of feedback to a manageable level. The testers benefit by having earlier access to new products, features and fixes. Beta testing may be preceded by "alpha testing", performed in-house by a handful of users (e.g. other developers or friends), who can be expected to give rapid, high quality feedback on design and usability. Once the product is considered to be usable for its intended purpose it then moves on to "beta testing" by a larger, but typically still limited, number of ordinary users, who may include external customers. Some companies such as Google or Degree Jungle stretch the definition, claiming their products are "in beta" for many months by millions of users. The term derives from early 1960s terminology for product cycle checkpoints, first used at IBM but later standard throughout the industry. "Alpha test" was the unit test, module test or component test phase; "Beta Test" was initial system test. These themselves came from earlier A- and B-tests for hardware. The A-test was a feasibility and manufacturability evaluation done before any commitment to design and development. The B-test was a demonstration that the engineering model functioned as specified. The C-test (corresponding to today's beta) was the B-test performed on early samples of the production design.
- bibliologist — a student of bibliology
- bibliopegist — a bookbinder
- binding post — one of several metal pegs or rods, fitted into a loose-leaf binder, for holding sheets with prepunched holes.
- bindle stiff — a hobo.
- bioacoustics — the study of animals' use of sound
- bioastronomy — the branch of biology which deals with the study or the discovery of life forms on other planets or in space
- biochemistry — Biochemistry is the study of the chemical processes that happen in living things.
- biopesticide — a naturally occurring or derived substance or an organism that controls pests by nontoxic means
- bioscientist — any science that deals with the biological aspects of living organisms.
- bird nesting — the activity of searching for birds' nests as a hobby
- bird-s--nest — nest (def 1).
- bit stuffing — (protocol) A protocol which guarantees the receiver of synchronous data can recover the sender's clock. When the data stream sent contains a large number of adjacent bits which cause no transition of the signal, the receiver cannot adjust its clock to maintain proper synchronised reception. To eliminate the possibility of such a pathological case, when a preset number of transitionless bits have been transmitted, a bit which does cause a transition is "stuffed" (transmitted) by the sender. The receiver follows the same protocol and removes the stuffed bit after the specified number of transitionless bits, but can use the stuffed bit to recover the sender's clock. The advantage of bit stuffing is that only a bit (not a byte) is inserted in the data stream, and that only when the content of the data stream fails to provide a timing signal to the receiver. Thus very nearly 100% of the bits transported are useful data. In contrast, asynchronous transmission of data "throws away" a start bit and one or more stop bits for each data byte sent.
- biting stage — the second part of the oral phase of psychosexual development, approximately 8 to18 months of age, during which a child has the urge to bite or chew objects.
- black forest — wooded mountain region in SW Germany
- black locust — Also called false acacia, yellow locust. a North American tree, Robinia pseudoacacia, of the legume family, having pinnate leaves and clusters of fragrant white flowers.
- black stream — a warm ocean current in the Pacific, flowing N along the E coast of Taiwan, NE along the E coast of Japan, and continuing in an easterly direction into the open Pacific.
- blast effect — the damage caused by the force of an explosive blast
- blastocoelic — of or relating to the blastocoel
- blastomycete — any of a genus (Blastomyces) of yeastlike imperfect fungi that cause diseases in people and animals
- blastosphere — blastula
- blastulation — the process of blastula formation
- blazing star — a North American liliaceous plant, Chamaelirium luteum, with a long spike of small white flowers
- blind stitch — a type of stitch that is visible on one side of the material only
- blister pack — a type of packet in which small items are displayed and sold, consisting of a transparent dome of plastic or similar material mounted on a firm backing such as cardboard
- blister rust — a disease of certain pines caused by rust fungi of the genus Cronartium, causing swellings on the bark from which orange masses of spores are released
- blisteringly — causing a blister or blisters.
- block system — the system whereby a railway is divided up into separate sections of track where only one train can travel at a time
- blockbusting — A blockbusting film or book is one that is very successful, usually because it is very exciting.
- blood sister — a sister by birth
- bloodstained — Someone or something that is bloodstained is covered with blood.
- bloodthirsty — Bloodthirsty people are eager to use violence or display a strong interest in violent things. You can also use bloodthirsty to refer to very violent situations.
- blue stilton — a rich cheese made from whole milk, blue-veined and very strong in flavour
- blue thistle — blueweed (def 1).
- blue-thistle — Also called blue thistle. a bristly weed, Echium vulgare, of the borage family, having showy blue flowers, a native of Europe naturalized in the U.S.
- bluestocking — A bluestocking is an intellectual woman.
- body bolster — the lower transverse member of a car body to which the body center plate is attached.
- boehm system — a system of improved fingering and keying for the flute and clarinet, invented by the German musician Theobald Boehm (1794–1881).
- bog-standard — If you describe something as bog-standard you mean that is an ordinary example of its kind, with no exciting or interesting features.
- boisterously — rough and noisy; noisily jolly or rowdy; clamorous; unrestrained: the sound of boisterous laughter.
- bolshevistic — of, relating to, or characteristic of Bolshevists or Bolshevism.
- boom-or-bust — boom-and-bust.