15-letter words containing a, b, d, u, c
- lambda-calculus — (mathematics) (Normally written with a Greek letter lambda). A branch of mathematical logic developed by Alonzo Church in the late 1930s and early 1940s, dealing with the application of functions to their arguments. The pure lambda-calculus contains no constants - neither numbers nor mathematical functions such as plus - and is untyped. It consists only of lambda abstractions (functions), variables and applications of one function to another. All entities must therefore be represented as functions. For example, the natural number N can be represented as the function which applies its first argument to its second N times (Church integer N). Church invented lambda-calculus in order to set up a foundational project restricting mathematics to quantities with "effective procedures". Unfortunately, the resulting system admits Russell's paradox in a particularly nasty way; Church couldn't see any way to get rid of it, and gave the project up. Most functional programming languages are equivalent to lambda-calculus extended with constants and types. Lisp uses a variant of lambda notation for defining functions but only its purely functional subset is really equivalent to lambda-calculus. See reduction.
- livery cupboard — a cupboard with pierced doors, formerly used as a storage place for food.
- mass-producible — to produce or manufacture (goods) in large quantities, especially by machinery.
- municipal bonds — a bond issued by a state, county, city, or town, or by a state authority or agency to finance projects.
- procrustean bed — a plan or scheme to produce uniformity or conformity by arbitrary or violent methods.
- quadruple bucky — Obsolete. 1. On an MIT space-cadet keyboard, use of all four of the shifting keys (control, meta, hyper, and super) while typing a character key. 2. On a Stanford or MIT keyboard in raw mode, use of four shift keys while typing a fifth character, where the four shift keys are the control and meta keys on *both* sides of the keyboard. This was very difficult to do! One accepted technique was to press the left-control and left-meta keys with your left hand, the right-control and right-meta keys with your right hand, and the fifth key with your nose. Quadruple-bucky combinations were very seldom used in practice, because when one invented a new command one usually assigned it to some character that was easier to type. If you want to imply that a program has ridiculously many commands or features, you can say something like: "Oh, the command that makes it spin the tapes while whistling Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is quadruple-bucky-cokebottle." See double bucky, bucky bits, cokebottle.
- reuben sandwich — a grilled sandwich of corned beef, Swiss cheese, and sauerkraut on rye bread.
- robert guiscard — Robert [French raw-ber] /French rɔˈbɛr/ (Show IPA), (Robert de Hauteville) c1015–85, Norman conqueror in Italy.
- rusty blackbird — a North American blackbird, Euphagus carolinus, the male of which has plumage that is uniformly bluish-black in the spring and rusty-edged in the fall.
- sb's trump card — Your trump card is something powerful that you can use or do, which gives you an advantage over someone.
- sebaceous gland — any of the cutaneous glands that secrete oily matter for lubricating hair and skin.
- subject heading — a title or heading of a category, esp in a bibliography or index
- subsidiary cell — Immunology. any of various cells of the immune system that work with T or B cells to initiate a specific immune response.
- subsidiary coin — a coin, especially one made of silver, having a value less than that of the monetary unit.
- tobacco budworm — the larva of a noctuid moth, Heliothis virescens, that damages the buds and young leaves of tobacco.
- un-considerable — rather large or great in size, distance, extent, etc.: It cost a considerable amount. We took a considerable length of time to decide.
- undisciplinable — unable to be disciplined or controlled
- unrecommendable — not able to be recommended, supported, or endorsed
- vascular bundle — a longitudinal arrangement of strands of xylem and phloem, and sometimes cambium, that forms the fluid-conducting channels of vascular tissue in the rhizomes, stems, and leaf veins of vascular plants, the arrangement varying with the type of plant.
- wheelchairbound — Confined to a wheelchair.