20-letter words containing a, b, i, l
- duck-billed dinosaur — hadrosaur.
- duck-billed platypus — platypus.
- dynamic link library — Dynamically Linked Library
- effective computable — (theory) A term describing a function for which there is an effective algorithm that correctly calculates the function. The algorithm must consist of a finite sequence of instructions.
- electoral boundaries — the way that a country or area is divided for the purposes of voting in an election
- elizabeth of hungary — Saint. 1207–31, Hungarian princess who devoted herself to charity and asceticism. Feast day: Nov 17 and 19
- employer's liability — an employer's legal responsibility to pay damages to an employee who has been injured or who has contracted an illness because of the work he or she does
- enabling legislation — legislation conferring certain specified powers on a person or organization
- endorsement in blank — an endorsement on a bill of exchange, cheque, etc, naming no payee and thus making the endorsed sum payable to the bearer
- environment variable — (programming, operating system) A variable that is bound in the current environment. When evaluating an expression in some environment, the evaluation of a variable consists of looking up its name in the environment and substituting its value. Most programming languages have some concept of an environment but in Unix shell scripts it has a specific meaning slightly different from other contexts. In shell scripts, environment variables are one kind of shell variable. They differ from local variables and command line arguments in that they are inheritted by a child process. Examples are the PATH variable that tells the shell the file system paths to search to find command executables and the TZ variable which contains the local time zone. The variable called "SHELL" specifies the type of shell being used. These variables are used by commands or shell scripts to discover things about the environment they are operating in. Environment variables can be changed or created by the user or a program. To see a list of environment variables type "setenv" at the csh or tcsh prompt or "set" at the sh, bash, jsh or ksh prompt. In other programming languages, e.g. functional programming languages, the environment is extended with new bindings when a function's parameters are bound to its actual arguments or when new variables are declared. In a block-structured procedural language, the environment usually consists of a linked list of activation records.
- equilibrium constant — The equilibrium constant is the ratio between the amount of reactants and the amount of product for a particular chemical reaction, used to calculate chemical behavior.
- five-a-side football — a version of soccer with five players in each team
- fontainebleau school — a group of artists, many of them Italian and Flemish, who worked on the decorations of the palace of Fontainebleau in the 16th century.
- football hooliganism — the actions or behaviour of a football hooligan
- for sb's delectation — If you do something for someone's delectation, you do it to give them enjoyment or pleasure.
- general public virus — (software, legal) A pejorative name for some versions of the GNU project copyleft or General Public License (GPL), which requires that any tools or application programs incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same terms as GNU code. Thus it is alleged that the copyleft "infects" software generated with GNU tools, which may in turn infect other software that reuses any of its code.
- gorno-altai republic — a constituent republic of S Russia: mountainous, rising over 4350 m (14 500 ft) in the Altai Mountains of the south. Capital: Gorno-Altaisk. Pop: 202 900 (2002). Area: 92 600 sq km (35 740 sq miles)
- grievous bodily harm — law: serious injury
- hildegard von bingen — Hildegard von (Hildegard of Bingen"Sibyl of the Rhine") 1098–1178, German nun, healer, writer, and composer.
- hindu-arabic numeral — Arabic numeral.
- hyperbolic cotangent — a hyperbolic function that is the ratio of cosh to sinh, being the reciprocal of tanh; coth
- in a class by itself — unique
- in the public domain — able to be discussed and examined freely by the general public
- independent variable — Mathematics. a variable in a functional relation whose value determines the value or values of other variables, as x in the relation y = 3 x 2 . Compare dependent variable (def 1).
- indistinguishability — The state of being indistinguishable.
- information builders — Distributors of LEVEL5 OBJECT. Telephone +1 800 969 INFO.
- intelligent database — (database) A database management system which performs data validation and processing traditionally done by application programs. Most DBMSs provide some data validation, e.g. rejecting invalid dates or alphabetic data entered into money fields, but often most processing is done by application programs. There is however no limit to the amount of processing that can be done by an intelligent database as long as the process is a standard function for that data. Examples of techniques used to implement intelligent databases are constraints, triggers and stored procedures. Moving processing to the database aids data integrity because it is guaranteed to be consistent across all uses of the data. Mainframe databases have increasingly become more intelligent and personal computer database systems are rapidly following.
- intervening variable — a hypothetical variable postulated to account for the way in which a set of independent variables control a set of dependent variables
- intestinal amebiasis — amebic dysentery.
- justifiable homicide — murder committed under extenuating circumstances
- laboratory assistant — laboratory technician, lab assistant
- laboratory diagnosis — scientific analysis of a disease
- laboratory equipment — apparatus for scientific research and experiments
- labour-saving device — a machine, gadget, etc, that reduces (human) effort, hard work or labour
- land-office business — a lively, booming, expanding, or very profitable business.
- legislative assembly — the legislature of France 1791–92.
- like a ton of bricks — (used esp of the manner of punishing or reprimanding someone) with great force; severely
- live and breathe sth — be passionately interested in sth
- longitude by account — the longitude of the position of a vessel as estimated by dead reckoning.
- marginal probability — (in a multivariate distribution) the probability of one variable taking a specific value irrespective of the values of the others
- member of parliament — A Member of Parliament is a person who has been elected by the people in a particular area to represent them in a country's parliament. The abbreviation MP is often used.
- membranous labyrinth — an intricate combination of paths or passages in which it is difficult to find one's way or to reach the exit. Synonyms: maze, network, web.
- meta-dichlorobenzene — a colorless liquid, C 6 H 4 Cl 2 , soluble in alcohol and ether: used as a fumigant and insecticide.
- miliary tuberculosis — tuberculosis in which the bacilli are spread by the blood from one point of infection, producing small tubercles in other parts of the body.
- multiplication table — Arithmetic. a tabular listing of the products of any two numbers of a set, usually of the integers 1 through 10 or 1 through 12.
- navigable semicircle — the less violent half of a cyclone; the half blowing in the direction opposite to that in which the cyclone is moving and in which a vessel can run before the wind.
- net realizable value — the net value of an asset if it were to be sold, taking into account the cost of making the sale and of bringing the asset into a saleable state
- new siberian islands — an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, off the N mainland of Russia, in the Sakha Republic. Area: about 37 555 sq km (14 500 sq miles)
- nickel tetracarbonyl — nickel carbonyl.
- northern leaf blight — a disease of corn caused by the fungus Exsherohilum turcicum, characterized by elongate tan-gray elliptical spots with subsequent blighting and necrosis of leaves.