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21-letter words containing a, b, i, l, r

  • equiangular hyperbola — a hyperbola with transverse and conjugate axes equal to each other.
  • extensible vax editor — (text, tool)   (EVE) A DEC product implemented using DEC's Text Processing Utility (TPU).
  • faculty board meeting — a meeting of the governing body of a faculty
  • forward compatibility — (jargon)   The ability to accept input from later versions of itself. Forward compatibility is harder to achieve than backward compatibility, since, in the backward case, the input format is know whereas a forward compatible system needs to cope gracefully with unknown future features. An example of future compatibility is the stipulation that a web browser should ignore HTML tags it does not recognise. See also extensible.
  • franco-belgian system — French system.
  • garbageabetical order — (humour)   1. The result of using an insertion sort to merge data into an unsorted list. 2. The state of any file or list that is supposed to be sorted, but is not.
  • generic type variable — (programming)   (Also known as a "schematic type variable"). Different occurrences of a generic type variable in a type expression may be instantiated to different types. Thus, in the expression let id x = x in (id True, id 1) id's type is (for all a: a -> a). The universal quantifier "for all a:" means that a is a generic type variable. For the two uses of id, a is instantiated to Bool and Int. Compare this with let id x = x in let f g = (g True, g 1) in f id This looks similar but f has no legal Hindley-Milner type. If we say f :: (a -> b) -> (b, b) this would permit g's type to be any instance of (a -> b) rather than requiring it to be at least as general as (a -> b). Furthermore, it constrains both instances of g to have the same result type whereas they do not. The type variables a and b in the above are implicitly quantified at the top level: f :: for all a: for all b: (a -> b) -> (b, b) so instantiating them (removing the quantifiers) can only be done once, at the top level. To correctly describe the type of f requires that they be locally quantified: f :: ((for all a: a) -> (for all b: b)) -> (c, d) which means that each time g is applied, a and b may be instantiated differently. f's actual argument must have a type at least as general as ((for all a: a) -> (for all b: b)), and may not be some less general instance of this type. Type variables c and d are still implicitly quantified at the top level and, now that g's result type is a generic type variable, any types chosen for c and d are guaranteed to be instances of it. This type for f does not express the fact that b only needs to be at least as general as the types c and d. For example, if c and d were both Bool then any function of type (for all a: a -> Bool) would be a suitable argument to f but it would not match the above type for f.
  • give sb a green light — If someone in authority gives you a green light, they give you permission to do something.
  • gold bullion standard — a gold standard in which gold is not coined but may be purchased at a fixed price for foreign exchange.
  • hierarchical database — (database)   A kind of database management system that links records together like a family tree such that each record type has only one owner, e.g. an order is owned by only one customer. Hierarchical structures were widely used in the first mainframe database management systems. However, due to their restrictions, they often cannot be used to relate structures that exist in the real world.
  • hildegard (of bingen) — Saint(1098-1179); Ger. nun, composer, & mystic: her day is Sept. 17
  • hindu-arabic numerals — Arabic numeral.
  • horizontal stabilizer — the horizontal surface, usually fixed, of an aircraft empennage, to which the elevator is hinged.
  • horizontal tabulation — (character)   (tab, Control-I, HT, ASCII 9) A character which when displayed or printed causes the following character to be placed at the next "tabstop" - the column whose number is a multiple of the current tab width. Commonly (especially in Unix(?)) the tab width is eight, so, counting from the left margin (column zero), the tab stops are at columns 8, 16, 24, up to the width of the screen or page. A tab width of four or two is often preferred when indenting program source code to conserve indentation. Represented as "\t" in C, Unix, and derivatives.
  • hyperbolic paraboloid — a paraboloid that can be put into a position such that its sections parallel to one coordinate plane are hyperbolas, with its sections parallel to the other two coordinate planes being parabolas.
  • imprecise probability — (probability)   A probability that is represented as an interval (as opposed to a single number) included in [0,1].
  • international brigade — a military force that fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, consisting of volunteers (predominantly socialists and communists) from many countries
  • intersubstitutability — a person or thing acting or serving in place of another.
  • irish republican army — an underground Irish nationalist organization founded to work for Irish independence from Great Britain: declared illegal by the Irish government in 1936, but continues activity aimed at the unification of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Abbreviation: IRA, I.R.A.
  • keep the ball rolling — a spherical or approximately spherical body or shape; sphere: He rolled the piece of paper into a ball.
  • laboratory technician — sb who assists in a laboratory
  • lady murasaki shikibu — Lady, 978?–1031? Japanese poet and novelist.
  • lambeth quadrilateral — the four essentials agreed upon at the Lambeth Conference of 1888 for a United Christian Church, namely, the Holy Scriptures, the Apostles' Creed, the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion, and the historic episcopate
  • language-based editor — language-sensitive editor
  • leave sb in the lurch — If someone leaves you in the lurch, they go away or stop helping you at a very difficult time.
  • liability engineering — the practice by a company of taking steps to avoid liability for any fraudulent dealings with it, such as making a credit-card owner responsible for any abuses of the card by a third party
  • like a blue-arsed fly — in a state of frenzied activity
  • long-term liabilities — Long-term liabilities are debts that a company does not have to pay back for a year or more.
  • magnetic permeability — permeability (def 2).
  • magnificent riflebird — a bird of paradise, Craspedophora magnifica
  • maître d'hôtel butter — melted butter mixed with parsley and lemon juice
  • maple-leaved viburnum — dockmackie.
  • marketable securities — Marketable securities are securities that can easily be sold quickly on the open market.
  • national public radio — a nationwide network of nonprofit radio stations supported in part by U.S. government funds distributed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, often affiliated with a public television station or educational institution. Abbreviation: NPR.
  • negotiable instrument — order or promise to pay money
  • negotiable securities — securities that are legally transferable in title from one party to another
  • nellis air force base — the largest air base in the U.S. Air Force's Tactical Air Command, located near Las Vegas, Nev., and developed from what began in 1941 as a U.S. Army Air Corps field.
  • nine-banded armadillo — an armadillo, Dasypus novemcinctus, of the southern U.S. to Argentina, having nine hinged bands of bony plates, the female of which usually gives birth to quadruplets that are always of the same sex.
  • northumberland strait — the part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence that separates Prince Edward Island from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, in SE Canada. About 200 miles (320 km) long; 9–30 miles (15–48 km) wide.
  • objective correlative — a completely depicted situation or chain of events that objectifies a particular emotion in such a way as to produce or evoke that emotion in the reader.
  • oblique circular cone — a cone whose surface is generated by lines joining a fixed point to the points of a circle, the fixed point lying on a line that is not perpendicular to the circle at its center.
  • observation satellite — an unmanned satellite that observes the earth and gathers data
  • open graphics library — (graphics, library)   (OpenGL) A multi-platform software interface to graphics hardware, supporting rendering and imaging operations. The OpenGL interface was developed by Silicon Graphics, who license it to other vendors. The OpenGL graphics interface consists of several hundred functions operating on 2D and 3D objects, supporting basic techniques, such as modelling and smooth shading, and advanced techniques, such as texture mapping and motion blur. Many operations require a frame buffer. OpenGL is network-transparent, and a common extension to the X Window System allows an OpenGL client to communicate across a network with a different vendor's OpenGL server. OpenGL is based on Silicon Graphics' proprietary IRIS GL.
  • optical double (star) — double star (sense 2)
  • pipelined burst cache — Pipeline Burst Cache
  • poor robin's plantain — the rattlesnake weed, Hieracium venosum.
  • posterior probability — the probability assigned to some parameter or to an event on the basis of its observed frequency in a sample, and calculated from a prior probability by Bayes' theorem
  • private member's bill — In Britain, a Private Member's Bill is a law that is proposed by a Member of Parliament acting as an individual rather than as a member of his or her political party.
  • probable maximum loss — Probable maximum loss is the maximum amount of loss that can be expected under normal circumstances.
  • propantheline bromide — a substance, C 2 3 H 3 0 BrNO 3 , used in the treatment of peptic ulcers.
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