287 symbols beginning with B. Each one is read four ways, and every source is named so you can check it.
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- BuckleThe part that fastens, and the same word for what happens to a structure just before it fails.
- BugleA horn with no valves, so it can only play a handful of notes, which is precisely why armies used it to give orders.
- BulldogA breed shaped by people into something that struggles to breathe, and then adopted as a symbol of national toughness.
- BurrA seed head built to catch on anything passing, which is how the plant travels and how it ends up on your sleeve.
- ButcherThe trade that stands between an animal and a meal, and the one shop people were happy to have on the high street and would rather not watch.
- Bank accountA number that stands for what you can do, and which most people check more often than they check anything else they own.
- Bank robberyA crime that is almost always caught, almost never worth the money, and endlessly rehearsed in fiction anyway.
- BarristerA lawyer who argues in court rather than preparing the case, in a profession split down the middle for historical reasons nobody would now design.
- BasketballA game invented on purpose, in a fortnight, to solve a specific problem, which almost no other sport can say.
- BatonA stick that means one of three completely different things depending on who is holding it, and each is about somebody else doing the work.
- Bay windowA window that leaves the wall and takes floor with it, which turns a flat room into one with a place to sit and watch the street.
- BenchPublic seating that in Britain and Ireland is very often a grave marker without a grave, carrying a name and two dates on a small brass plate.
- Birthday presentA gift with a deadline attached, which is why it is the only present that can be late.
- BoilerThe one machine in a house that everybody depends on, nobody understands, and only thinks about when it stops.
- Border postA building placed on a line that does not exist in the ground, where the question is whether you are allowed to continue.
- BoutiqueA shop small enough that you cannot browse unobserved, which changes what buying anything in it feels like.
- BruiseAn injury that appears after the event and changes colour on a schedule, which makes it the only wound that tells you how long ago.
- BuffetA meal where the rules are unwritten and everybody is watching how much everybody else takes.
- Burglar alarmA device whose main function is to be believed in, since most of what it prevents is somebody deciding to try.
- Bus driverSomebody responsible for fifty strangers who will never learn their name, on a route they could drive with their eyes shut and must not.
- Bus stopA place that exists only because of something that is not there yet, which makes it the purest waiting there is.
- Body armourProtection that works by spreading a blow rather than stopping it, so surviving in it still means being badly hurt.
- BackgammonOne of the oldest games still played, and the only common board game where luck and skill are both large and both visible.
- BanknoteA piece of paper that is worth something because a bank promised it is, which is a stranger arrangement than daily use suggests.
- BarkingA sound dogs make almost entirely at humans, since wild canids rarely bark as adults and this one was bred into them.
- BedbugAn insect that lives in the one place a person is least able to leave, and whose return after near-eradication is a real modern problem.
- Being abandonedOne of the most commonly reported dream feelings, and one that arrives as often to people with families as to people without.
- BakerSomebody whose working day starts when everybody else's ends, in the one trade where being late by twenty minutes ruins everything.
- BarleyThe grain that made beer before it made bread, and the one that grows where wheat will not bother.
- BarracksA building designed so that a large number of people can live together with no privacy and very little argument.
- BattlefieldA place named for one day in its history, which is otherwise a field and is usually farmed again within a year.
- Being bittenAn injury delivered by something with a mind, which is what separates it from every other wound in a dream.
- BlackbirdThe bird most people in these islands have actually heard sing, whether or not they could name it.
- Being held captiveA dream about the removal of the ability to leave, which is a different fear from being hurt and often a larger one.
- BasiliskA creature that kills by being looked at, which makes it the rare monster where the danger runs through the dreamer's own attention.
- BlackthornA hedge tree that flowers before it leafs, so the white blossom arrives on bare black wood, and every part of it is armed.
- BelongingThe dream of being somewhere you have a right to be, which is usually noticed only at the moment it is in doubt.
- BattlementA parapet with gaps in it, built so that defenders can shoot and then step behind stone, and later built on houses that were never going to be atta...
- ButtressA mass of stone added outside a wall to stop it falling outward, and the flying kind carries the thrust across open air to the ground.
- BellringerThe person who makes a sound the whole parish hears, standing in a tower where they cannot see anyone react to it.
- BuoyA float anchored in one place to mark something under the water, and it is the marker that is visible while the actual hazard never is.
- BeakerA plain vessel for measuring rather than drinking, marked in graduations that are deliberately approximate.
- BargainingTrying to get better terms, which requires believing there is somebody on the other side who can be moved.
- BeckoningBeing called over by a gesture rather than a word, which asks for movement without giving a reason.
- BraidingWeaving three strands so that each holds the others, producing something stronger than the parts and impossible to shorten without undoing.
- BodhranA frame drum played with a double-ended stick and damped by the other hand from behind, so the sound is shaped by the hand nobody watches.
- BileThe bitter fluid the liver makes to break down fat, and the substance two of the four humours were named after.
- BlisterA pocket of fluid raised under the skin to protect what is underneath, which means the injury is also the repair.
- BeechA tree with a canopy so dense that almost nothing grows underneath, so a beech wood is open, quiet and nearly bare at ground level.
- BookbinderThe trade that turns a stack of printed sheets into an object that will survive being opened several thousand times.
- BumblebeeA large furry bee that can warm itself by shivering, which is why it works in cold weather when nothing else will fly.
- Bay leafThe leaf of the laurel, put into food for a flavour most people could not name and taken out again before serving.
- BarnacleA crustacean that cements itself head-first to a rock and spends its life kicking food into its own mouth with its legs.
- BrewerA trade that depends on an organism nobody could see for most of its history, and that worked reliably anyway.
- BargeA flat-bottomed boat with almost no draught, built to carry weight on water too shallow for anything with a keel.
- BassoonA low woodwind whose tube is over eight feet long and folded double so a person can hold it, with fingering that never got rationalised.
- BandstandA small roofed platform in a park, raised so a crowd can see a band and shaped so the sound goes outward.
- BarbicanAn outwork in front of a gate, built so that anyone attacking has to take a second gate first and be shot at from both sides while doing it.
- BayouA slow or still watercourse in low ground, where a river has changed its mind and left a channel behind.
- BasaltLava that cooled fast at the surface and, where it cooled evenly, cracked into columns so regular they look built.
- BarracudaA fast predatory fish that strikes at anything bright, which is why it goes for jewellery and for a hand in murky water.
- BreamA deep-bodied freshwater fish that feeds nose-down in the mud and gives itself away by the bubbles.
- BricklayerA trade laying identical units in a pattern where the joints must never line up, because a straight vertical line is where a wall fails.
- BodiceA stiffened upper garment whose name is a plural, because it was made in two halves laced together and called a pair of bodies.
- BrocadeA heavy figured cloth where the pattern is made by extra threads carried across the back and brought to the front only where wanted.
- BalalaikaA triangular instrument with three strings, two of them tuned to the same note, so the drone is built into the tuning.
- ButteAn isolated flat-topped hill standing alone on a plain, which is not a thing that was built up but what is left after everything else went.
- BanyanA fig that drops roots from its branches until they become trunks, so one tree spreads into what looks like a wood.
- BaobabA tree with a swollen trunk that holds water, hollow enough in some cases that people have used one as a room.
- BrackenA fern that takes over ground after fire or clearance and holds it by poisoning what tries to grow underneath.
- BuckwheatA staple that is not wheat and not a grass, and is more closely related to rhubarb and dock than to anything in a cornfield.
- BalustradeA row of small shaped posts holding a rail, named after the pomegranate flower its bulging profile was thought to resemble.
- BradawlA small tool that starts a hole by pushing wood fibres aside rather than cutting them, so nothing is removed.
- BitternA reedbed heron heard far more than seen, whose booming call carries for miles and comes from a bird almost nobody has looked at.
- BullfinchA finch that strips the buds off fruit trees in late winter, and was killed for a bounty in English parishes for centuries.
- BegoniaA plant that can be grown from a single leaf, so a cutting laid on soil produces a whole new plant from a cut vein.
- BankruptcyFailure in business, from banca rotta, the broken bench, because a defaulting trader's counter was smashed in the market.
- BullionMetal valued only by weight and purity, with no design on it, so it is money before anybody has decided whose.
- BailiffAn officer who takes goods to satisfy a debt, and who may enter only in ways the law has specified with great care.
- BlunderbussA gun with a flared muzzle, which does not spread the shot, whatever everybody believes, and is flared to make loading quick.
- ByreA cowshed, often built against the house or under it, so the animals' heat rose into the room where people slept.
- BranThe husk sieved out of flour to make it white, then sold back separately as the part that was good for you.
- BevelAn angled edge cut where two surfaces meet, and the adjustable tool for setting that angle, which is the same word.
- BagatelleA sloped board studded with pins where a ball is fired up one side and left to find its own way down, and also a word for a trifle.
- BlurDetail going while shape stays, which is a stranger loss than darkness because there is still plenty to look at.
- BlotterSoft paper pressed onto wet ink, which dries the page and takes away a mirror image of everything that was on it.
- BrazierFire in a basket, which is warmth taken to where the work is instead of the work coming to the hearth.