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16-letter words containing a, e, r, o

  • barometric error — error of a timepiece due to the fluctuations in density of the atmosphere through which the balance or pendulum moves.
  • baron tweedsmuir — the title of Scottish novelist John Buchan
  • barrier of ideas — the representations of objects which certain accounts of perception interpose between the objects themselves and our awareness of them, so that, as critics argue, we can never know whether there is in reality anything which resembles our perceptions
  • bartholomeu dias — Bartholomeu [bahr-too-loo-me-oo] /ˌbɑr tʊ lʊˈmɛ ʊ/ (Show IPA), c1450–1500, Portuguese navigator: discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope.
  • basic dichromate — an orange-red, amorphous, water-insoluble powder, Bi 2 O 3 ⋅2CrO 3 , used chiefly as a pigment in paints.
  • basque provinces — an autonomous region of N Spain, comprising the provinces of Álava, Guipúzcoa, and Vizcaya: inhabited mainly by Basques, who retained virtual autonomy from the 9th to the 19th century. Pop: 1 840 700 (2003 est). Area: about 7250 sq km (2800 sq miles)
  • batch processing — manufacturing products or treating materials in batches, by passing the output of one process to subsequent processes
  • bathroom cabinet — a wall-mounted cabinet in a bathroom, typically with a mirror front and used for the storage of medicines and toiletries
  • bathythermograph — a device for measuring the temperature of the ocean at any specific depth down to c. 1,800 m (c. 5,900 ft)
  • batlle y ordonez — José [haw-se] /hɔˈsɛ/ (Show IPA), 1856–1929, Uruguayan statesman: president of Uruguay 1903–07, 1911–15.
  • battery-operated — powered, driven, or operated with batteries
  • bayonet practice — drill in the use of a bayonet
  • be on the market — to be offered for sale
  • be out of breath — If you are out of breath, you are breathing very quickly and with difficulty because you have been doing something energetic.
  • bear one's cross — a structure consisting essentially of an upright and a transverse piece, used to execute persons in ancient times.
  • beat to the draw — to be quicker than (another) in doing something, as in drawing one's weapon
  • behavior pattern — a recurrent way of acting by an individual or group toward a given object or in a given situation.
  • behavior therapy — therapy employing behavior modification
  • behavioural sink — a small area in which people or animals live in overcrowded conditions
  • bells of ireland — an annual garden plant, Moluccella laevis, whose flowers have a green cup-shaped calyx: family Lamiaceae (labiates)
  • beneficial owner — a person entitled to receive the profits or proceeds of property
  • bermuda palmetto — a palm, Sabal bermudana, of Bermuda, having small, roundish, black fruit and leaves that are checkered beneath.
  • best-before date — a date on packaged food indicating how long it is safe to keep it
  • beta abstraction — [lambda-calculus] The conversion of an expression to an application of a lambda abstraction to an argument expression. Some subterm of the original expression becomes the argument of the abstraction and the rest becomes its body. E.g. 4+1 --> (\ x . x+1) 4 The opposite of beta abstraction is beta reduction. These are the two kinds of beta conversion.
  • bidirectionality — capable of reacting or functioning in two, usually opposite, directions.
  • billy goat beard — a man's beard that is long under the chin and shaved elsewhere
  • 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.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • bipolar disorder — Bipolar disorder is a mental illness in which a person's state of mind changes between extreme happiness and extreme depression.
  • 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-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.
  • bitterroot range — range of the Rocky Mountains, along the Ida.-Mont. border: highest peak, c. 11,000 ft (3,353 m)
  • black chokeberry — See under chokeberry (def 1).
  • black woodpecker — a large woodpecker, Dryocopus martius, found in parts of Eurasia and Africa
  • bleaching powder — a white powder with the odour of chlorine, consisting of chlorinated calcium hydroxide with an approximate formula CaCl(OCl).4H2O. It is used in solution as a bleaching agent and disinfectant
  • blue dawn-flower — a tropical American vine, Ipomoea acuminata, of the morning glory family, having large, funnel-shaped flowers that turn from blue to pink.
  • bluegrass region — a region in central Kentucky, famous for its horse farms and fields of bluegrass.
  • board and batten — a siding consisting of wide boards or of sheets of plywood set vertically with butt joints covered by battens.
  • boarding kennels — a place where dog owners can pay to have their dogs looked after while they are away
  • boarding officer — a coastguard who boards ships suspected of carrying illegal cargoes or posing a security risk
  • bomb calorimeter — a device for determining heats of combustion by igniting a sample in a high pressure of oxygen in a sealed vessel and measuring the resulting rise in temperature: used for measuring the calorific value of foods
  • bon gre, mal gre — whether willing or not; willy-nilly.
  • bonded warehouse — a warehouse in which dutiable goods are deposited until duty is paid or the goods are cleared for export
  • bonhomme richard — the flagship of John Paul Jones.
  • boolean-operator — any operation in which each of the operands and the result take one of two values.
  • bootstrap loader — (operating system)   A short program loaded from non-volatile storage and used to bootstrap a computer. On early computers great efforts were expended on making the bootstrap loader short, in order to make it easy to toggle in via the front panel switches. It was just clever enough to read in a slightly more complex program (usually from punched cards or paper tape), to which it handed control. This program in turn read the application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk drive. Thus, in successive steps, the computer "pulled itself up by its bootstraps" to a useful operating state. Nowadays the bootstrap loader is usually found in ROM or EPROM, and reads the first stage in from a fixed location on the disk, called the "boot block". When this program gains control, it is powerful enough to load the actual OS and hand control over to it. A diskless workstation can use bootp to load its OS from the network.
  • bootstrap memory — memory that allows new programs to be entered because some simple preliminary instructions or information are already built in.
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