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18-letter words containing a, b, i, o, l

  • blanche of castile — ?1188–1252, queen consort (1223–26) of Louis VIII of France, born in Spain. The mother of Louis IX, she acted as regent during his minority (1226–36) and his absence on a crusade (1248–52)
  • blissful ignorance — unawareness or inexperience of something unpleasant
  • blocking capacitor — a capacitor that blocks the passage of direct current but allows alternating current to pass
  • bloggs family, the — An imaginary family consisting of Fred and Mary Bloggs and their children. Used as a standard example in knowledge representation to show the difference between extensional and intensional objects. For example, every occurrence of "Fred Bloggs" is the same unique person, whereas occurrences of "person" may refer to different people. Members of the Bloggs family have been known to pop up in bizarre places such as the DEC Telephone Directory. Compare Mbogo, Dr. Fred.
  • bloodbrain barrier — a layer of tightly packed cells that make up the walls of brain capillaries and prevent substances in the blood from diffusing freely into the brain: passage across the cell membranes is determined by solubility in the lipid bilayer or recognition by a transport molecule.
  • board of elections — a bipartisan board appointed usually by local authorities and charged with control of elections and voting procedure.
  • bomb disposal unit — a unit of the police or armed services specializing in bomb disposal
  • boole's inequality — the theorem that the probability of several events occurring is less than or equal to the sum of the probabilities of each event occurring.
  • borosilicate glass — any of a range of heat- and chemical-resistant glasses, such as Pyrex, prepared by fusing together boron(III) oxide, silicon dioxide, and, usually, a metal oxide
  • branch to fishkill — (IBM: from the location of one of the corporation's facilities) Any unexpected jump in a program that produces catastrophic or just plain weird results. See jump off into never-never land, hyperspace.
  • brazilian rosewood — a Brazilian tree, Dalbergia nigra, of the legume family.
  • break your silence — If someone breaks their silence about something, they talk about something that they have not talked about before or for a long time.
  • british somaliland — a former British protectorate (1884–1960) in E Africa, on the Gulf of Aden: united with Italian Somaliland in 1960 to form Somalia (or the Somali Republic); in 1991 the self-styled republic of Somaliland, covering the same area as the former British Somaliland, declared itself independent and continues to function largely as a separate entity, though without international recognition
  • broken twill weave — a twill weave in which the direction of the diagonal produced by the weft threads is reversed after no more than two passages of the weft.
  • burkitt's lymphoma — a cancer characterized by tumors containing lymphoid cells, occurring esp. in children, in the jaw, eyes, and internal organs: it is associated with the Epstein-Barr virus
  • butler's sideboard — a sideboard, often with a fall front, having on its top a china cabinet with glazed doors.
  • california rosebay — a Pacific coast shrub or tree (Rhododendron californicum) of the heath family, with rosy or purplish flowers
  • cape breton island — an island off SE Canada, in NE Nova Scotia, separated from the mainland by the Strait of Canso: its easternmost point is Cape Breton. Pop: 132 298 (2006). Area: 10 280 sq km (3970 sq miles)
  • carboxyhaemoglobin — haemoglobin coordinated with carbon monoxide, formed as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning. As carbon monoxide is bound in preference to oxygen, tissues are deprived of oxygen
  • carisbrooke castle — a castle near Newport on the Isle of Wight: Charles I was held prisoner here from 1647 until his execution in 1649
  • cerebral dominance — the normal tendency for one half of the brain, usually the left cerebral hemisphere in right-handed people, to exercise more control over certain functions (e.g. handedness and language) than the other
  • claustrophobically — In a claustrophobic way.
  • clay-colored robin — any of several small Old World birds having a red or reddish breast, especially Erithacus rubecula, of Europe.
  • clobbering machine — pressure to conform with accepted standards
  • cobalt violet deep — a medium to strong purple color.
  • coffee-table music — unadventurous music
  • controllable-pitch — (of a marine or aircraft propeller) having blades whose pitch can be changed during navigation or flight; variable-pitch.
  • debt consolidation — the process of taking out a new loan (often secured on one's property) in order to pay off a number of existing debts
  • decachlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) The fully chlorinated polychlorinated biphenyl containing ten chlorine atoms.
  • depository library — a library designated by law to receive without charge all or a selection of the official publications of a government.
  • 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
  • didaskaleinophobia — The fear of going to school.
  • disability pension — a pension paid to people who are unable to continue to work because of a disability
  • distribution class — form class
  • division of labour — a system of organizing the manufacture of an article in a series of separate specialized operations, each of which is carried out by a different worker or group of workers
  • dominican republic — a republic in the West Indies, occupying the E part of the island of Hispaniola. 19,129 sq. mi. (49,545 sq. km). Capital: Santo Domingo.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • fall-back position — an alternative plan
  • fibrocartilaginous — a type of cartilage having a large number of fibers.
  • flat-bottomed rail — a rail having a cross section like an inverted T, with the top extremity enlarged slightly to form the head
  • forward compatible — forward compatibility
  • gabriele dannunzio — Gabriele [Italian gah-bree-e-le] /Italian ˌgɑ briˈɛ lɛ/ (Show IPA), (Duca Minimo) 1863–1938, Italian soldier, novelist, and poet.
  • 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.
  • hamilton's problem — Hamiltonian problem
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