12-letter words containing w
- billy wilder — Billy (Samuel Wilder) 1906–2002, U.S. film director, producer, and writer; born in Austria.
- binder twine — a strong, coarse twine, as of sisal, used especially in binding sheaves of grain and bales of hay.
- bird watcher — a person who identifies and observes birds in their natural habitat as a recreation.
- bird-watcher — A bird-watcher is a person whose hobby is watching and studying wild birds in their natural surroundings.
- birth weight — the amount a baby weighs when first born
- biscuit ware — unglazed earthenware
- black pewter — pewter composed of 60 percent tin and 40 percent lead.
- black powder — gunpowder as used in sports involving modern muzzleloading firearms
- black walnut — a North American walnut tree, Juglans nigra, with hard dark wood and edible oily nuts
- black wattle — a small Australian acacia tree, A. mearnsii, with yellow flowers
- bladder worm — an encysted saclike larva of the tapeworm. The main types are cysticercus, hydatid, and coenurus
- bladderwrack — any of several seaweeds of the genera Fucus and Ascophyllum, esp F. vesiculosus, that grow in the intertidal regions of rocky shores and have branched brown fronds with air bladders
- blow by blow — precisely detailed; describing every minute detail and step: a blow-by-blow account of the tennis match; a blow-by-blow report on the wedding ceremony.
- blow molding — Blow molding is a process for forming plastic objects in which plastic is melted, put in a mold, and then shaped by having compressed air blown into it.
- blow through — to leave; make off
- blow-by-blow — A blow-by-blow account of an event describes every stage of it in great detail.
- blow-molding — the sound of any vapor or gas issuing from a vent under pressure.
- blue dogwood — a shrub or small tree, Cornus alternifolia, of eastern North America, having clusters of white flowers and bluish fruit.
- blue swimmer — an edible bluish Australian swimming crab, Portunus pelagicus
- blue whiting — a fish of the cod family, Micromesistius poutassou
- blue-sky law — a state law regulating the trading of securities: intended to protect investors from fraud
- boil down to — If you say that a situation or problem boils down to a particular thing or can be boiled down to a particular thing, you mean that this is the most important or the most basic aspect of it.
- boiled sweet — Boiled sweets are hard sweets that are made from boiled sugar.
- bond washing — a series of deals in bonds made with the intention of avoiding taxation
- bonding wire — A bonding wire is a wire connecting two pieces of equipment, often for hazard prevention.
- bottled wine — wine that has been transferred from barrel to bottle
- bottlewasher — a person or machine that washes bottles.
- bourke-white — Margaret. 1906–71, US photographer, a pioneer of modern photojournalism: noted esp for her coverage of World War II
- bow thruster — a propeller located in a ship's bow to provide added maneuverability, as when docking.
- bowdlerizing — to expurgate (a written work) by removing or modifying passages considered vulgar or objectionable.
- bowel cancer — cancer of the colon
- bowling ball — a round, heavy ball for bowling, usually made of hard rubber or plastic, with holes drilled into it for the bowler's thumb and two fingers.
- brainwashing — the process of brainwashing.
- branch water — water from a stream, as opposed to mineral or soda water
- braunschweig — Brunswick
- breadwinning — a person who earns a livelihood, especially one who also supports dependents.
- breakweather — any makeshift shelter.
- breast wheel — a waterwheel onto which the propelling water is fed at the height of a horizontal axle.
- british warm — an army officer's short thick overcoat
- brochureware — (jargon, business) A planned, but non-existent, product, like vaporware but with the added implication that marketing is actively selling and promoting it (they've printed brochures). Brochureware is often deployed to con customers into not committing to a competing existing product. The term is now especially applicable to new websites, website revisions, and ancillary services such as customer support and product return. Owing to the explosion of database-driven, cookie-using dot-coms (of the sort that can now deduce that you are, in fact, a dog), the term is now also used to describe sites made up of static HTML pages that contain not much more than contact info and mission statements. The term suggests that the company is small, irrelevant to the web, local in scope, clueless, broke, just starting out, or some combination thereof. Many new companies without product, funding, or even staff, post brochureware with investor info and press releases to help publicise their ventures. As of December 1999, examples include pop.com and cdradio.com. Small-timers that really have no business on the web such as lawncare companies and divorce laywers inexplicably have brochureware made that stays unchanged for years.
- broken arrow — a town in NE Oklahoma.
- broken water — a patch of water whose surface is rippled or choppy, usually surrounded by relatively calm water.
- brooks's law — (programming) "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" - a result of the fact that the expected advantage from splitting work among N programmers is O(N) (that is, proportional to N), but the complexity and communications cost associated with coordinating and then merging their work is O(N^2) (that is, proportional to the square of N). The quote is from Fred Brooks, a manager of IBM's OS/360 project and author of "The Mythical Man-Month". The myth in question has been most tersely expressed as "Programmer time is fungible" and Brooks established conclusively that it is not. Hackers have never forgotten his advice; too often, management still does. See also creationism, second-system effect, optimism.
- brown bag it — to bring (one's own liquor) to a restaurant or club, especially one that has no liquor license.
- brown bagger — to bring (one's own liquor) to a restaurant or club, especially one that has no liquor license.
- brown butter — beurre noir.
- brown canker — a fungous disease of roses, characterized by leaf and flower lesions, stem cankers surrounded by a reddish-purple border, and dieback.
- brown hackle — an artificial fly having a peacock herl body, golden tag and tail, and brown hackle.
- brown-nosing — If you accuse someone of brown-nosing, you are saying in a rather offensive way that they are agreeing with someone important in order to get their support.
- browser skin — a changeable decorative background for a browser