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16-letter words containing a, b, y

  • bootstrap memory — memory that allows new programs to be entered because some simple preliminary instructions or information are already built in.
  • boston tea party — a raid in 1773 made by citizens of Boston (disguised as Indians) on three British ships in the harbour as a protest against taxes on tea and the monopoly given to the East India Company. The contents of several hundred chests of tea were dumped into the harbour
  • boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
  • brandy alexander — an Alexander cocktail made with brandy
  • bright and early — very early in the morning
  • brittany spaniel — a short-tailed French bird dog that typically has a smooth orange- or liver-and-white coat
  • broomrape family — the plant family Orobanchaceae, characterized by scaly, leafless herbaceous plants that are parasitic on the roots of other plants and have irregular flowers and many-seeded capsular fruit, and including beechdrops, broomrape, and squawroot.
  • brown-eyed susan — a composite plant, Rudbeckia triloba, of the southeastern U.S., having a single flower with yellow rays darkening to an orange orbrown at the base and a brownish-black disk.
  • buckley's chance — no chance at all
  • buckthorn family — the plant family Rhamnaceae, characterized by shrubs and trees having alternate, simple leaves, clusters of small flowers, and fruit in the form of a drupe or capsule, and including the buckthorn, cascara, and New Jersey tea.
  • buckwheat family — the plant family Polygonaceae, characterized by herbaceous plants, vines, shrubs, and trees having stems with swollen joints, simple leaves, small, petalless flowers, and fruit in the form of an achene, and including the buckwheat, dock, knotweed, rhubarb, sea grape, and smartweed.
  • bullying tactics — the use of intimidation to gain one's objective
  • bunker mentality — a defensive attitude in which others are seen as hostile or potentially hostile
  • bunya-bunya pine — a tall dome-shaped Australian coniferous tree, Araucaria bidwillii, having edible cones (bunya nuts) and thickish flattened needles
  • buoyancy chamber — an enclosed section of a canoe, float, ship or other object that contains air, foam, or another buoyant substance in order to help maintain buoyancy
  • bureaucratically — of, relating to, or characteristic of a bureaucrat or a bureaucracy; arbitrary and routine.
  • burkitt lymphoma — a rare type of tumour of the white blood cells, occurring mainly in Africa and associated with infection by Epstein-Barr virus
  • bury the hatchet — to cease hostilities and become reconciled
  • business analyst — (job)   A person who analyses the operations of a department or functional unit to develop a general systems solution to the problem. The solution will typically involve a combination of manual and automated processes. The business analyst can provide insights into an operation for an information systems analyst.
  • busman's holiday — If you have a holiday, but spend it doing something similar to your usual work, you can refer to it as a busman's holiday.
  • buttercup family — the plant family Ranunculaceae, typified by mostly herbaceous plants having usually alternate leaves, multistaminate flowers sometimes lacking petals but with colorful sepals, and including the anemone, buttercup, clematis, columbine, delphinium, and monkshood.
  • butterfly ballot — a ballot paper in the form of two leaves extending from a central spine
  • butterfly damper — a damper, as in a flue, that rotates about a central axis across its face.
  • buying behaviour — the behaviours displayed by consumers when they purchase things, such as preferences, price points, etc
  • bypass capacitor — a capacitor which provides a low-impedance path for alternating current while not passing any direct current
  • bypass operation — an operation involving redirection of blood flow, either to avoid a diseased blood vessel or in order to perform heart surgery
  • byzantine church — Orthodox Church (def 1).
  • byzantine empire — the continuation of the Roman Empire in the East, esp after the deposition of the last emperor in Rome (476 ad). It was finally extinguished by the fall of Constantinople, its capital, in 1453
  • cabbage root fly — a dipterous fly, Erioischia brassicae, whose larvae feed on the roots and stems of cabbages and other brassicas: family Muscidae (houseflies, etc)
  • can you beat it? — an expression of utter amazement or surprise
  • canterbury bells — a cultivated bellflower (Campanula medium) with white, pink, or blue cuplike flowers
  • canterbury tales — an unfinished literary work by Chaucer, largely in verse, consisting of stories told by pilgrims on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket at Canterbury
  • capacity booking — a time when someone has booked the whole of a venue or the maximum amount of something available
  • cape may warbler — a North American wood warbler, Dendroica tigrina, olive-green striped with black on the wings and back and yellow striped with black on the breast.
  • carboxylesterase — (enzyme) Any enzyme that catalyses the hydrolysis of a carboxylic ester.
  • carboxypeptidase — any of several digestive enzymes that catalyze the removal of an amino acid from the end of a peptide chain having a free carbonyl group.
  • cathode ray tube — (hardware)   (CRT) An electrical device for displaying images by exciting phosphor dots with a scanned electron beam. CRTs are found in computer VDUs and monitors, televisions and oscilloscopes. The first commercially practical CRT was perfected on 29 January 1901 by Allen B DuMont. A large glass envelope containing a negative electrode (the cathode) emits electrons (formerly called "cathode rays") when heated, as in a vacuum tube. The electrons are accelerated across a large voltage gradient toward the flat surface of the tube (the screen) which is covered with phosphor. When an electron strikes the phosphor, light is emitted. The electron beam is deflected by electromagnetic coils around the outside of the tube so that it scans across the screen, usually in horizontal stripes. This scan pattern is known as a raster. By controlling the current in the beam, the brightness at any particular point (roughly a "pixel") can be varied. Different phosphors have different "persistence" - the length of time for which they glow after being struck by electrons. If the scanning is done fast enough, the eye sees a steady image, due to both the persistence of the phospor and of the eye itself. CRTs also differ in their dot pitch, which determines their spatial resolution, and in whether they use interlace or not.
  • cathode-ray tube — A cathode-ray tube is a device in televisions and computer terminals which sends an image onto the screen.
  • celebrity status — the prominence of film star, footballer, musician etc who is constantly photographed and written about in tabloids and magazines
  • chernobyl packet — (networking)   /cher-noh'b*l pak'*t/ A network packet that induces a broadcast storm and/or network meltdown, named in memory of the April 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine. The typical scenario involves an IP Ethernet datagram that passes through a gateway with both source and destination Ethernet address and IP address set as the respective broadcast addresses for the subnetworks being gated between. Compare Christmas tree packet.
  • chiclet keyboard — (hardware, abuse)   A keyboard with a small, flat rectangular or lozenge-shaped rubber or plastic keys that look like pieces of Chiclets chewing gum. Used especially to describe the original IBM PCjr keyboard. Vendors unanimously liked these because they were cheap, and a lot of early portable and laptop computers were launched with them. Customers rejected the idea with almost equal unanimity, and chiclets are not often seen on anything larger than a digital watch any more.
  • city of aberdeen — a council area in NE Scotland, established in 1996. Pop: 206 600 (2003 est). Area: 186 sq km (72 sq miles)
  • clinically obese — overweight to a degree which causes medical complications
  • close by/at hand — Something that is close by or close at hand is near to you.
  • commensurability — The quality of being commensurable or commensurate.
  • companionability — The state of being companionable, suitability for companionship.
  • constructability — Alternative form of constructibility.
  • cramp sb's style — If someone or something cramps your style, their presence or existence restricts your behavior in some way.
  • cray instability — A shortcoming of a program or algorithm that manifests itself only when a large problem is being run on a powerful machine such as a Cray. Generally more subtle than bugs that can be detected in smaller problems running on a workstation or minicomputer.
  • crossbow archery — the sport of shooting with a crossbow
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