18-letter words starting with b
- break your silence — If someone breaks their silence about something, they talk about something that they have not talked about before or for a long time.
- breast enhancement — a surgical procedure to increase the size of a woman's breasts
- breast enlargement — a surgical procedure to increase the size of a woman's breasts
- breathe one's last — When someone breathes their last, they die.
- breathing exercise — an exercise intended to promote effective and healthy breathing and breath control
- brewer's blackbird — a blackbird, Euphagus cyanocephalus, of the U.S., the male of which has greenish-black plumage with a purplish-black head.
- brightness control — a control that enables the brightness of the image on a television screen, computer monitor, etc to be adjusted
- bring someone luck — If you say that something brings bad luck or brings someone good luck, you believe that it has an influence on whether good or bad things happen to them.
- bring to its knees — If a country or organization is brought to its knees, it is almost completely destroyed by someone or something.
- bring-and-buy sale — A bring-and-buy sale is an informal sale to raise money for a charity or other organization. People who come to the sale bring things to be sold and buy things that other people have brought.
- briquet's syndrome — somatization disorder.
- british somaliland — a former British protectorate (1884–1960) in E Africa, on the Gulf of Aden: united with Italian Somaliland in 1960 to form Somalia (or the Somali Republic); in 1991 the self-styled republic of Somaliland, covering the same area as the former British Somaliland, declared itself independent and continues to function largely as a separate entity, though without international recognition
- broad-leaved maple — a maple, Acer macrophyllum, of western North America, characterized by dark green, thickened leaves that may reach 12 inches (30 cm) or more in width.
- broadcasting house — any of a number of buildings in the UK from which the BBC broadcasts or has broadcast
- broken twill weave — a twill weave in which the direction of the diagonal produced by the weft threads is reversed after no more than two passages of the weft.
- bromochloromethane — chlorobromomethane.
- bronchocandidiasis — See under candidiasis.
- brothers karamazov — a novel (1880) by Dostoevsky.
- brute force attack — (cryptography) A method of breaking a cipher (that is, to decrypt a specific encrypted text) by trying every possible key. The quicker the brute force attack, the weaker the cipher. Feasibility of brute force attack depends on the key length of the cipher, and on the amount of computational power available to the attacker. Brute force attack is impossible against the ciphers with variable-size key, such as a one-time pad cipher.
- bubble-jet printer — an ink-jet printer that heats the ink before printing
- building materials — materials such as bricks, cement, timber, etc
- built-in self test — (BIST) The technique of designing circuits with additional logic which can be used to test proper operation of the primary (functional) logic.
- bullnose stretcher — bull stretcher (def 1).
- bullnose-stretcher — Also called bullnose stretcher. a brick having one of the edges along its length rounded for laying as a stretcher in a sill or the like.
- burkitt's lymphoma — a cancer characterized by tumors containing lymphoid cells, occurring esp. in children, in the jaw, eyes, and internal organs: it is associated with the Epstein-Barr virus
- burn one's bridges — If you burn your bridges, you do something which forces you to continue with a particular course of action, and makes it impossible for you to return to an earlier situation or relationship.
- burn one's fingers — to suffer from having meddled or been rash
- burrell collection — a gallery in Glasgow, noted for its collection of paintings, textiles, furniture, ceramics, etc
- bursa of fabricius — a lymphoid gland of the cloaca in birds, believed to function in disease resistance, and closing or disappearing as the bird ages.
- burst at the seams — to break, break open, or fly apart with sudden violence: The bitter cold caused the pipes to burst.
- business education — education for general knowledge of business practices.
- butler's sideboard — a sideboard, often with a fall front, having on its top a china cabinet with glazed doors.
- butter-and-egg man — a prosperous businessman from a small town or a farmer who spends his money ostentatiously on visits to a big city.
- butterhead lettuce — a major group of lettuce varieties having soft, pliable leaves and small, loose heads, including bibb and Boston lettuce
- by fits and starts — spasmodically; without concerted effort
- byte-code compiler — (programming, tool) A compiler which outputs a program in some kind of byte-code. Compare: byte-code interpreter.