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19-letter words containing a, b, n, d

  • cock-and-bull story — If you describe something that someone tells you as a cock-and-bull story, you mean that you do not believe it is true.
  • convergent boundary — a major geologic discontinuity or suture marking the juncture of lithospheric plates that have been joined by plate tectonics.
  • coordination number — the number of coordinated species surrounding the central atom in a complex or crystal
  • cowboys and indians — a children's game in which players imitate the supposed behavior of cowboys and Indians in conflict, as in shooting, chasing, and capturing.
  • cudgel one's brains — to think hard about a problem
  • darby and joan club — a club for elderly people
  • database management — the maintenance of information stored in a computer system
  • de broglie equation — the postulate of wave mechanics that a particle of mass m moving at a velocity v will have the properties of a wave of wavelength h / mv (de Broglie wavelength) where h is Planck's constant.
  • deathbed confession — a confession that somebody makes just before he or she dies, usually relating to some long concealed crime or secret
  • department of labor — the department of the U.S. federal government that promotes and improves the welfare, opportunities, and working conditions of wage earners. Abbreviation: DOL.
  • dependable software — software reliability
  • detective constable — a police officer who investigates crime and who is of the lowest rank
  • devils-on-horseback — a savoury of prunes wrapped in bacon slices and served on toast
  • differential backup — (operating system)   A kind of backup that copies all files that have changed since the last full backup. Each differential backup will include all files in previous differential backups since the full backup so to restore a version of a file, you only need to search the full backup and the relevant differential backup. Some systems support differential backup by associating an "Archive" flag with each file and setting this flag whenever the file is modified to indicate that it should be included in the next backup. A differential backup does not change this flag, whereas an incremental backup resets it.
  • disablement benefit — (in Britain) a noncontributory benefit payable to a person disabled through injury or disease caused by their work
  • disambiguation page — a page on a website that lists various websites or web pages that have or could have the same title. The user is able to select from the list that page, site etc that he or she actually wants
  • distinguishableness — The state or quality of being distinguishable.
  • dobsonian telescope — a relatively inexpensive Newtonian telescope, suitable for visual but not photographic use, in which the tube assembly slips freely in the lower base.
  • don the baggy green — to represent Australia at Test cricket
  • dutchman's-breeches — a plant, Dicentra cucullaria, of the fumitory family, having long clusters of pale-yellow, two-spurred flowers.
  • east dunbartonshire — a council area of central Scotland to the N of Glasgow: part of Strathclyde region from 1975 until 1996: mainly agricultural and residential. Administrative centre: Kirkintilloch. Pop: 106 970 (2003 est). Area: 172 sq km (66 sq miles)
  • electronic keyboard — a typewriter keyboard used to operate an electronic device such as a computer, word processor, etc
  • error-based testing — (programming)   Testing where information about programming style, error-prone language constructs, and other programming knowledge is applied to select test data capable of detecting faults, either a specified class of faults or all possible faults.
  • extensible database — (database)   A DBMS that allows access to data from remote sources as if the remote data were part of the database.
  • fahd ibn abdul aziz — 1923–2005, king of Saudi Arabia (1982–2005)
  • fault-based testing — (testing)   Software testing using test data designed to demonstrate the absence of a set of pre-specified faults; typically, frequently occurring faults. For example, to demonstrate that the software handles or avoids divide by zero correctly, the test data would include zero.
  • few and far between — not many but more than one: Few artists live luxuriously.
  • financial ombudsman — any of five British ombudsmen: the Banking Ombudsman, set up in 1986 to investigate complaints from bank customers; the Building Society Ombudsman, set up in 1987 to investigate complaints from building society customers; the Insurance Ombudsman, set up in 1981 to investigate complaints by policyholders (since 1988 this ombudsman has also operated a Unit Trust Ombudsman scheme); the Investment Ombudsman set up in 1989 to investigate complaints by investors (the Personal Investment Authority Ombudsman is responsible for investigating complaints by personal investors); and the Pensions Ombudsman, set up in 1993 to investigate complaints regarding pension schemes
  • florida velvet bean — a tropical vine, Mucuna deeringiana, of the legume family, having showy, purple flowers in drooping clusters and black, hairy pods: grown as an ornamental.
  • foundation subjects — the subjects studied as part of the National Curriculum, including the compulsory core subjects
  • functional database — (database, language)   A database which uses a functional language as its query language. Databases would seem to be an inappropriate application for functional languages since, a purely functional language would have to return a new copy of the entire database every time (part of) it was updated. To be practically scalable, the update mechanism must clearly be destructive rather than functional; however it is quite feasible for the query language to be purely functional so long as the database is considered as an argument. One approach to the update problem would use a monad to encapsulate database access and ensure it was single threaded. Alternative approaches have been suggested by Trinder, who suggests non-destructive updating with shared data structures, and Sutton who uses a variant of a Phil Wadler's linear type system. There are two main classes of functional database languages. The first is based upon Backus' FP language, of which FQL is probably the best known example. Adaplan is a more recent language which falls into this category. More recently, people have been working on languages which are syntactically very similar to modern functional programming languages, but which also provide all of the features of a database language, e.g. bulk data structures which can be incrementally updated, type systems which can be incrementally updated, and all data persisting in a database. Examples are PFL [Poulovassilis&Small, VLDB-91], and Machiavelli [Ohori et al, ACM SIGMOD Conference, 1998].
  • gentile da fabriano — 1370?–1427, Italian painter.
  • gigabits per second — (unit)   (Gbps) A unit of information transfer rate equal to one billion bits per second. Note that, while a gigabit is defined as a power of two (2^30 bits), a gigabit per second is defined as a power of ten (10^9 bits per second, which is slightly less) than 2^30).
  • giovanni da bologna — Giovanni da [jee-uh-vah-nee duh;; Italian jaw-vahn-nee dah] /ˌdʒi əˈvɑ ni də;; Italian dʒɔˈvɑn ni dɑ/ (Show IPA), (Jean de Boulogne; Giambologna) c1525–1608, Italian sculptor, born in France.
  • giraldus cambrensis — literary name of Gerald de Barri. ?1146–?1223, Welsh chronicler and churchman, noted for his accounts of his travels in Ireland and Wales
  • goldbach conjecture — an unproved theorem that every even integer greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two prime numbers.
  • handlebar moustache — a man's moustache having long, curved ends that resemble the handlebars of a bicycle.
  • have one's blood up — to be or cause to be angry or inflamed
  • hildegard of bingen — Hildegard von (Hildegard of Bingen"Sibyl of the Rhine") 1098–1178, German nun, healer, writer, and composer.
  • honorable discharge — a discharge from military service of a person who has fulfilled obligations efficiently, honorably, and faithfully.
  • hydrostatic balance — a balance for finding the weight of an object submerged in water in order to determine the upthrust on it and thus determine its relative density
  • hydroxybenzoic acid — Hydroxybenzoic acid is the active ingredient in a number of drugs, for example, aspirin. Hydroxybenzoic acid is also used as a preservative.
  • hydroxydaunorubicin — Doxorubicin.
  • in the catbird seat — If you say that someone is in the catbird seat, you think that their situation is very good.
  • industrial tribunal — (in Northern Ireland and formerly elsewhere in the UK) a tribunal that rules on disputes between employers and employees regarding unfair dismissal, redundancy, etc
  • installed user base — user base
  • intervertebral disc — any of the cartilaginous discs between individual vertebrae, acting as shock absorbers
  • intervertebral disk — the plate of fibrocartilage between the bodies of adjacent vertebrae.
  • judgment by default — a judgment in the plaintiff's favour when the defendant fails to plead or to appear
  • kellogg-briand pact — a treaty renouncing war as an instrument of national policy and urging peaceful means for the settlement of international disputes, originally signed in 1928 by 15 nations, later joined by 49 others.
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