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Baruch Spinoza
(en)
Dutch philosopher of Sephardi/Portuguese origin; in Ethics, laid groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism, including modern conceptions of the self and the universe
basis point
(en)
(noun) one hundredth of one percent (as in the yield of an investment)
bathos
(en)
(noun) a literary term coined by Alexander Pope to describe to describe amusingly failed attempts at sublimity (an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous); adj is "bathetic"
batrachian
(en)
(noun) amphibian / (noun) frog toad
fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, led by King Leonidas of Sparta, and the Persian Empire of Xerxes I over the course of three days, during the second Persian invasion of Greece; the subject of the movie 300
Baumol effect
(en)
(aka Baumol's cost disease) rise of salaries in jobs that have experienced no increase of labor productivity, in response to rising salaries in other jobs that have experienced the labor productivity growth
bayadere
(en)
(noun) a fabric with horizontal stripes in strongly contrasted colors
beatification
(en)
(verb) to make supremely happy / (verb) to declare to have attained the blessedness of heaven and authorize the title “Blessed” and limited public religious honor
bedesmen
(en)
religious figures in medieval Scotland who solicited donations on the promise of praying for their benefactors
bedizen
(en)
(verb) dress up or decorate gaudily
beleaguered
(en)
besieged, troubled, beset with difficulties
belfry
(en)
(noun) a bell tower / (noun) one surmounting or attached to another structure / (noun) a room or framework for enclosing a bell / (noun) head
belie
(en)
(verb) to give a false impression of / (verb) to present an appearance not in agreement with / (verb) to show (something) to be false or wrong / (verb) to run counter to; contradict / (verb) disguise
Belle Époque
(fr)
conventionally dated from the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914; characterized by optimism, regional peace, economic prosperity, apex of colonial empires and technological, scientific and cultural innovations
belled interview
(en)
a one-sided conversation (after a term coined for Nabokov's critique of telephone conversations where the reader hears only one speaker)
Bellerophon
(en)
a hero in Greek mythology whose greatest feat was killing the Chimera
belles-lettres
(en)
a category of writing derived from the French phrase meaning "beautiful" or "fine" writing; includes all literary works—especially fiction, poetry, drama, or essays—valued for their aesthetic qualities and originality of style and tone
belvedere
(en)
(noun) a structure (as a cupola or a summerhouse) designed to command a view
beneficence
(en)
the doing of good; active goodness or kindness; charity
Benford's Law
(en)
(aka the first-digit law) in many real-life sets of numerical data, the leading significant digit is likely to be small
Bentham's push-pin
(en)
a quote by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham from The Rationale of Reward: "Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry."
benumbed
(en)
deprived of physical or emotional feeling
Berkeleyan
(en)
(adjective) of, relating to, or suggestive of Bishop Berkeley or his system of philosophical idealism, whose fundamental proposition can be summed up as "esse est percepi" (Latin for "To be is to be perceived")
berm
(en)
(noun) a narrow shelf, path, or ledge typically at the top or bottom of a slope / (noun) a mound or wall of earth or sand / (noun) the shoulder of a road
betterment
(en)
(noun) an improvement that adds to the value of a property or facility