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18-letter words containing a, b, l

  • flat file database — (database)   A database containing a single table, stored in a single flat file, often in a human-readable format such as comma-separated values or fixed-width columns.
  • flat on one's back — lying supine
  • flat-bottomed rail — a rail having a cross section like an inverted T, with the top extremity enlarged slightly to form the head
  • football supporter — a person who supports a particular football team
  • 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.
  • gamal abdel nasser — Gamal Abdel [guh-mahl ab-doo l,, juh-] /gəˈmɑl ˈæb dʊl,, dʒə-/ (Show IPA), 1918–70, Egyptian military and political leader: prime minister of Egypt 1954–56; president of Egypt 1956–58; president of the United Arab Republic 1958–70.
  • gamblers anonymous — an organization that holds group meetings to help people who are addicted to gambling
  • 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.
  • gas-permeable lens — a semisoft contact lens, usually removed each day, that allows air to pass through to the eye and affords a wider range of vision corrections than a soft contact lens.
  • 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
  • giuseppe garibaldi — Giuseppe [juh-sep-ee;; Italian joo-zep-pe] /dʒəˈsɛp i;; Italian dʒuˈzɛp pɛ/ (Show IPA), 1807–82, Italian patriot and general.
  • gladden sb's heart — If you say that something gladdens someone's heart, you mean that it makes them feel pleased and hopeful.
  • golden bantam corn — a horticultural variety of sweet corn having yellow kernels.
  • golden gate bridge — a bridge connecting N California with San Francisco peninsula. 4200-foot (1280-meter) center span.
  • golden-brown algae — a group of mostly marine, motile algae of the phylum Chlorophyta, characterized by the presence of the pigments chlorophyll, carotene, and xanthophyll, which impart golden to yellow-brown colors.
  • gooseneck barnacle — goose barnacle
  • grumbling appendix — a condition in which the appendix causes intermittent pain but appendicitis has not developed
  • hamilton's problem — Hamiltonian problem
  • handkerchief table — corner table.
  • handlebar mustache — A handlebar mustache is a long thick mustache with curled ends.
  • hardy-weinberg law — a principle stating that in an infinitely large, randomly mating population in which selection, migration, and mutation do not occur, the frequencies of alleles and genotypes do not change from generation to generation.
  • hawksbill (turtle) — a medium-sized marine turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata, family Cheloniidae) having a hawklike beak and a horny shell from which tortoise shell is obtained
  • head disk assembly — (hardware, storage)   (HDA) A sealed, high capacity mainframe hard disk with integral heads, as opposed to a removable disk.
  • hebdomadal council — the governing council or senate of Oxford University
  • hexachlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) Either of forty-two isomers of the polychlorinated biphenyl containing six chlorine atoms.
  • histocompatibility — the condition of having antigenic similarities such that cells or tissues transplanted from one (the donor) to another (the recipient) are not rejected.
  • honorable ordinary — any of the ordinaries believed to be among those that are oldest or that were the source of the other ordinaries, as the chief, pale, fess, bend, chevron, cross, and saltire.
  • 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.
  • hydrofluorocarbons — Plural form of hydrofluorocarbon.
  • hyperbilirubinemia — an abnormally high level of bilirubin in the blood, manifested by jaundice, anorexia, and malaise, occurring in association with liver disease and certain hemolytic anemias.
  • impressionableness — The quality of being impressionable.
  • in all probability — the quality or fact of being probable.
  • in black and white — without colour
  • 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-band signalling — (communications)   (Or CAS, channel associated signaling) Transmission of control signals in the same channel as data. This is commonly used in the Public Switched Telephone Network where the same pair of wires carry both voice and control signals (e.g. dialling, ringing). Another example is the use on a computer serial line of Control-S and Control-Q characters for flow control as opposed to hardware flow control which would be out-of-band signalling. In digital communications, in-band signalling often uses "bit-robbing" where, for example, one bit in each frame is used for signalling instead of data. This is the reason why a D1 channel in the T-carrier system can only carry 56 Kbps of usable data instead of the 64 Kbps carried by the D0 channel in the E-carrier system.
  • incommensurability — not commensurable; having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison.
  • inconsiderableness — Quality of being inconsiderable.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • interchangeability — (of two things) capable of being put or used in the place of each other: interchangeable symbols.
  • interdealer broker — an agent who is paid a commission to bring buyers and sellers together
  • interdependability — capable of being depended on; worthy of trust; reliable: a dependable employee.
  • invalidity benefit — (formerly, in the British National Insurance scheme) a weekly payment to a person who had been off work through illness for more than six months: replaced by incapacity benefit in 1995
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