18-letter words containing a, b, i, n, t
- diabetes insipidus — a disorder of the pituitary gland causing excessive thirst and excretion of large quantities of dilute urine
- diamondback turtle — any edible North American terrapin of the genus Malaclemys, esp M. terrapin, occurring in brackish and tidal waters and having diamond-shaped markings on the shell: family Emydidae
- disability pension — a pension paid to people who are unable to continue to work because of a disability
- distinguishability — to mark off as different (often followed by from or by): He was distinguished from the other boys by his height.
- distribution class — form class
- distribution ratio — the ratio of concentrations of a solute distributed between two immiscible solvents in contact with each other, as iodine in water and chloroform
- double achievement — a representation of the arms of a husband beside those of his wife such that a difference of rank between them is shown.
- dressing table set — a set including a hairbrush, mirror and comb, often with silver backs
- electronic banking — the transfer of money between financial institutions through an exchange of electronic signals over a network
- electronic mailbox — a device used to store electronic mail
- elizabeth petrovna — 1709-62; empress of Russia (1741-62): daughter of Peter I
- elizabethan sonnet — Shakespearean sonnet
- epstein-barr virus — a virus belonging to the herpes family that causes infectious mononucleosis; it is also implicated in the development of Burkitt's lymphoma and Hodgkin's disease
- escape sb's notice — If something escapes your notice, you fail to recognize it or realize it.
- establishmentarian — Adhering to, advocating, or relating to the principle of an established church.
- fabric conditioner — a product used when washing clothes to make them feel softer
- fall-back position — an alternative plan
- fibrocartilaginous — a type of cartilage having a large number of fibers.
- fire and brimstone — When people talk about fire and brimstone, they are referring to hell and how they think people are punished there after death.
- fire-and-brimstone — threatening punishment in the hereafter: a fire-and-brimstone sermon.
- flash butt welding — a method of welding metal edge-to-edge with a powerful electric flash followed by the application of pressure.
- fragmentation bomb — a bomb designed to break into many small, high-velocity fragments when detonated.
- gamma distribution — a continuous two-parameter distribution from which the chi-square and exponential distributions are derived, written Gamma (α. β), where α and β are greater than zero, and defined in terms of the gamma function
- garbage collection — (programming) (GC) The process by which dynamically allocated storage is reclaimed during the execution of a program. The term usually refers to automatic periodic storage reclamation by the garbage collector (part of the run-time system), as opposed to explicit code to free specific blocks of memory. Automatic garbage collection is usually triggered during memory allocation when the amount free memory falls below some threshold or after a certain number of allocations. Normal execution is suspended and the garbage collector is run. There are many variations on this basic scheme. Languages like Lisp represent expressions as graphs built from cells which contain pointers and data. These languages use automatic dynamic storage allocation to build expressions. During the evaluation of an expression it is necessary to reclaim space which is used by subexpressions but which is no longer pointed to by anything. This reclaimed memory is returned to the free memory pool for subsequent reallocation. Without garbage collection the program's memory requirements would increase monotonically throughout execution, possibly exceeding system limits on virtual memory size. The three main methods are mark-sweep garbage collection, reference counting and copying garbage collection. See also the AI koan about garbage collection.
- gilbert and george — a team of artists, Gilbert Proesch, Italian, born 1942, and George Passmore, British, born 1943: noted esp for their photomontages and performance works
- golden gate bridge — a bridge connecting N California with San Francisco peninsula. 4200-foot (1280-meter) center span.
- good/not bad going — If you say that something that has been achieved is good going or not bad going, you mean that it is better than usual or than expected.
- hamilton's problem — Hamiltonian problem
- handkerchief table — corner table.
- have a thing about — If you have a thing about someone or something, you have very strong feelings about them.
- heat of combustion — the heat evolved when one mole of a substance is burnt in oxygen at constant volume
- honourable mention — If something that you do in a competition is given an honourable mention, it receives special praise from the judges although it does not actually win a prize.
- ifs, ands, or buts — a supposition; uncertain possibility: The future is full of ifs.
- in all probability — the quality or fact of being probable.
- in black and white — without colour
- in company with sb — If you feel, believe, or know something in company with someone else, you both feel, believe, or know it.
- in the belief that — If you do one thing in the belief that another thing is true or will happen, you do it because you think, usually wrongly, that it is true or will happen.
- in the same breath — the air inhaled and exhaled in respiration.
- incapacity benefit — (in Britain) a regular government payment made to people who are unable to work for an extended period through disability
- incommensurability — not commensurable; having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison.
- incremental backup — (operating system) A kind of backup that copies all files which have changed since the date of the previous backup. The first backup of a file system should include all files - a "full backup". Call this level 0. The next backup could also be a full level 0 backup but it is usually much quicker to do a level 1 backup which will include only those files which have changed since the level 0 backup. Together the level 0 and level 1 backups will include the latest version of every file. Level 1 backups can be made until, say, the backup tape is nearly full, after which we can switch to level 2. Each level includes those files which have changed since the last backup at a lower level. The more levels you use, the longer it will take to restore the latest version of a file (or all files) if you don't know when it was last modified. Compare differential backup.
- indecent behaviour — the offence of committing indecent acts
- individual liberty — the liberty of an individual to exercise freely those rights generally accepted as being outside of governmental control.
- indolebutyric acid — a white or yellowish, crystalline, water-insoluble powder, C 12 H 13 O 2 N, a plant hormone similar to indoleacetic acid and used for the same purposes.
- information bureau — an office where you can go to get information
- informatory double — a double intended to inform one's partner that one has a strong hand and to urge a bid regardless of the strength of his or her hand.
- input/output table — a table of all the inputs and outputs of the industries of an economy
- insurable interest — a financial or other interest in the life or property covered by an insurance contract, without which the contract cannot be enforced
- intensional object — the object of a propositional attitude that may or may not exist, as in Robert is dreaming of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. This must be an intensional (or opaque) context, for otherwise, since there is no pot of gold, Robert would be dreaming of nothing
- interbroker dealer — a specialist who matches the needs of different market makers and facilitates dealings between them