10-letter words containing a, b, u
- bullroarer — a wooden slat attached to a thong that makes a roaring sound when the thong is whirled: used esp by native Australians in religious rites
- bum around — If you bum around, you go from place to place without any particular destination, either for enjoyment or because you have nothing else to do.
- bumbailiff — (formerly) an officer employed to collect debts and arrest debtors for nonpayment
- bump along — advance unevenly
- bump start — a method of starting a motor vehicle by engaging a low gear with the clutch depressed and pushing it or allowing it to run down a hill until sufficient momentum has been acquired to turn the engine by releasing the clutch
- bumper car — A bumper car is a small electric car with a wide rubber bumper all round. People drive bumper cars around a special enclosure at a fairground.
- bunchgrass — grass that grows in tufts
- bundesbank — the central bank of Germany
- buonaparte — Bonaparte1
- buonarroti — Michelangelo.
- burckhardt — Jacob Christoph. 1818–97, Swiss art and cultural historian; author of The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy (1860)
- bureaucrat — Bureaucrats are officials who work in a large administrative system. You can refer to officials as bureaucrats especially if you disapprove of them because they seem to follow rules and procedures too strictly.
- burgenland — a state of E Austria. Capital: Eisenstadt. Pop: 276 419 (2003 est). Area: 3965 sq km (1531 sq miles)
- burger bar — a restaurant selling primarily hamburgers and similar dishes
- burglarize — If a building is burglarized, a thief enters it by force and steals things.
- burgundian — of or relating to Burgundy or its inhabitants
- burlingame — Anson [an-suh n] /ˈæn sən/ (Show IPA), 1820–70, U.S. diplomat.
- burma road — the route extending from Lashio in Burma (now Myanmar) to Chongqing in China, which was used by the Allies during World War II to supply military equipment to Chiang Kai-shek's forces in China
- bursarship — a scholarship or grant awarded esp in Scottish and New Zealand schools, universities etc
- burst page — banner
- burushaski — a language of NW Kashmir, not known to be related to any other language.
- bus master — (architecture) The device in a computer which is driving the address bus and bus control signals at some point in time. In a simple architecture only the (single) CPU can be bus master but this means that all communications between ("slave") I/O devices must involve the CPU. More sophisticated architectures allow other capable devices (or multiple CPUs) to take turns at controling the bus. This allows, for example, a network controller card to access a disk controller directly while the CPU performs other tasks which do not require the bus, e.g. fetching code from its cache. Note that any device can drive data onto the data bus when the CPU reads from that device, but only the bus master drives the address bus and control signals. See also distributed kernel.
- bush basil — See under basil.
- bush grass — a coarse reedlike grass, Calamagrostis epigejos, 1–11⁄2 metres (3–41⁄2 ft) high that grows on damp clay soils in Europe and temperate parts of Asia
- bushbeater — a person who conducts a thorough search to recruit talented people, as for an athletic team.
- bushhammer — a hammer with small pyramids projecting from its working face, used for dressing stone
- bushmaster — a large greyish-brown highly venomous snake, Lachesis muta, inhabiting wooded regions of tropical America: family Crotalidae (pit vipers)
- bushranger — an escaped convict or robber living in the bush
- bushwalker — a person who hikes through bushland
- bust a gut — to make an intense effort
- bustamante — Anastasio [ah-nahs-tah-syaw] /ˌɑ nɑsˈtɑ syɔ/ (Show IPA), 1780–1853, Mexican military and political leader: president 1830–32, 1837–41.
- butane gas — a colourless flammable gaseous alkane that exists in two isomeric forms, both of which occur in natural gas. The stable isomer, n-butane, is used mainly in the manufacture of rubber and fuels (such as Calor Gas). Formula: C4H10
- butt heads — an extremely stupid or inept person.
- butt plate — a plate made usually of metal and attached to the butt end of a gunstock
- butt shaft — a blunt-headed unbarbed arrow
- butt-naked — completely naked
- butt-strap — (in metal construction) a plate which overlaps and fastens two pieces butted together.
- butterball — a chubby or fat person
- button ear — a dog's ear that folds forward completely.
- button man — soldier (sense 2) soldier (sense 2b)
- buttonball — a North American plane tree, Platanus occidentalis
- butylation — the introduction of butyl into a compound
- buzz about — to scurry about
- buzz along — a low, vibrating, humming sound, as of bees, machinery, or people talking.
- by default — If something happens by default, it happens only because something else which might have prevented it or changed it has not happened.
- byssaceous — consisting of fine threads
- bytesexual — (jargon) /bi:t" sek"shu-*l/ An adjective used to describe hardware, denotes willingness to compute or pass data in either big-endian or little-endian format (depending, presumably, on a mode bit somewhere). See also NUXI problem.
- cabanatuan — city in SC Luzon, in the Philippines: pop. 173,000
- cable buoy — a buoy marking or supporting part of a submerged cable.
- calculable — Calculable amounts or consequences can be calculated.