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16-letter words starting with b

  • bill of exchange — (now chiefly in foreign transactions) a document, usually negotiable, containing an instruction to a third party to pay a stated sum of money at a designated future date or on demand
  • billy goat beard — a man's beard that is long under the chin and shaved elsewhere
  • bimetallic strip — a strip consisting of two metals of different coefficients of expansion welded together so that it buckles on heating: used in thermostats, etc
  • 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.
  • binet-simon test — an intelligence test that consists of questions, problems, and things to do, graded in terms of mental age
  • binocular fusion — fusion (def 5a).
  • binocular-fusion — the act or process of fusing; the state of being fused.
  • binomial theorem — a mathematical theorem that gives the expansion of any binomial raised to a positive integral power, n. It contains n + 1 terms: (x + a)n = xn + nxn–1a + [n(n–1)/2] xn–2a2 +…+ (nk) xn–kak + … + an, where (nk) = n!/(n–k)!k!, the number of combinations of k items selected from n
  • binuclear family — a social unit composed of an extended family, usually the children and subsequent spouses of divorced parents.
  • biocompatibility — the capability of coexistence with living tissues or organisms without causing harm: Artificial joint adhesives must have biocompatibility with bone and muscle.
  • biodegradability — capable of decaying through the action of living organisms: biodegradable paper; biodegradable detergent.
  • biodeterioration — biodegradation.
  • bioenvironmental — pertaining to the environment of living organisms: Bioenvironmental engineers seek to reduce air and water pollution.
  • biofortification — the process of breeding staple crops to have higher levels of essential nutrients, either through selective breeding or genetic modification: iron biofortification of rice; biofortification of wheat with zinc.
  • biological child — any child conceived rather than adopted by a specified parent, and therefore carrying genes from the parent.
  • biological clock — Your biological clock is your body's way of registering time. It does not rely on events such as day or night, but on factors such as your habits, your age, and chemical changes taking place in your body.
  • biological value — the nutritional effectiveness of the protein in a given food, expressed as the percentage used by the body of either the total protein consumed or the digestible protein available.
  • biomagnification — biological magnification.
  • biometeorologist — the scientific study of the effects of natural or artificial atmospheric conditions, as temperature and humidity, on living organisms.
  • biometric device — biometrics
  • biotechnological — Biotechnological means relating to biotechnology.
  • biotic potential — the capacity of a population of organisms to increase in numbers under optimum environmental conditions.
  • bipolar disorder — Bipolar disorder is a mental illness in which a person's state of mind changes between extreme happiness and extreme depression.
  • birchbark biting — a Native Canadian craft in which designs are bitten onto bark from birch trees
  • bird in the hand — 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.
  • bird of ill omen — a person who brings bad news.
  • bird of paradise — A bird of paradise is a songbird which is found mainly in New Guinea. The male birds have very brightly coloured feathers.
  • bird's-eye maple — a cut of sugar maple wood used especially for veneers, having a wavy grain with many dark, circular markings.
  • bird's-nest fern — a tropical fern, Asplenium nidus, having fronds arranged in clumps resembling a bird's nest.
  • bird's-nest soup — a rich spicy Chinese soup made from the outer part of the nests of SE Asian swifts of the genus Collocalia
  • bird-of-paradise — Also called bird-of-paradise flower. any of several plants of the genus Strelitzia, native to southern Africa, especially S. reginae, having a large, showy orange and blue inflorescence.
  • birthday honours — (in Britain) honorary titles conferred on the official birthday of the sovereign
  • birthday present — a gift given to someone on their birthday
  • birthwort family — the plant family Aristolochiaceae, typified by mostly tropical woody vines and herbaceous plants, having alternate, heart-shaped leaves and flowers lacking true petals but having three petallike sepals, and including the birthwort, Dutchman's-pipe, and wild ginger.
  • bismarck herring — marinaded herring, served cold
  • bit-mapped image — a computer image that is held in memory as a series of colored dots in a grid, each dot represented by one or more bits.
  • bite one's nails — to chew off the ends of one's fingernails
  • bite your tongue — either of the two fleshy parts or folds forming the margins of the mouth and functioning in speech.
  • bitter principle — any of various bitter-tasting substances, such as aloin, usually extracted from plants
  • bitterroot range — range of the Rocky Mountains, along the Ida.-Mont. border: highest peak, c. 11,000 ft (3,353 m)
  • bitterroot river — a river in SW Montana, flowing N to the Clark Fork River. 120 miles (193 km) long.
  • black bottom pie — a rich pie with a rum- or whiskey-flavored chocolate filling, often with a crust of crushed gingersnaps, and topped with whipped cream.
  • black chokeberry — See under chokeberry (def 1).
  • black nightshade — a poisonous solanaceous plant, Solanum nigrum, a common weed in cultivated land, having small white flowers with backward-curved petals and black berry-like fruits
  • black propaganda — propaganda that does not come from the source it claims to come from
  • black woodpecker — a large woodpecker, Dryocopus martius, found in parts of Eurasia and Africa
  • 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)
  • black-letter day — an unlucky or tragic day.
  • black-light trap — a trap for insects that uses ultraviolet light as an attractant.
  • blacktailed deer — a mule deer, esp. the subspecies (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) found from N Calif. to British Columbia
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