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21-letter words containing a, b, t, i, l

  • faculty board meeting — a meeting of the governing body of a faculty
  • fall ill/be taken ill — If you fall ill or are taken ill, you suddenly become ill.
  • file allocation table — (file system)   (FAT) The component of an MS-DOS or Windows 95 file system which describes the files, directories, and free space on a hard disk or floppy disk. A disk is divided into partitions. Under the FAT file system each partition is divided into clusters, each of which can be one or more sectors, depending on the size of the partition. Each cluster is either allocated to a file or directory or it is free (unused). A directory lists the name, size, modification time and starting cluster of each file or subdirectory it contains. At the start of the partition is a table (the FAT) with one entry for each cluster. Each entry gives the number of the next cluster in the same file or a special value for "not allocated" or a special value for "this is the last cluster in the chain". The first few clusters after the FAT contain the root directory. The FAT file system was originally created for the CP/M[?] operating system where files were catalogued using 8-bit addressing. MS DOS's FAT allows only 8.3 filenames. With the introduction of MS-DOS 4 an incompatible 16-bit FAT (FAT16) with 32-kilobyte clusters was introduced that allowed partitions of up to 2 gigabytes. Microsoft later created FAT32 to support partitions larger than two gigabytes and pathnames greater that 256 characters. It also allows more efficient use of disk space since clusters are four kilobytes rather than 32 kilobytes. FAT32 was first available in OEM Service Release 2 of Windows 95 in 1996. It is not fully backward compatible with the 16-bit and 8-bit FATs. Compare: NTFS.
  • forward compatibility — (jargon)   The ability to accept input from later versions of itself. Forward compatibility is harder to achieve than backward compatibility, since, in the backward case, the input format is know whereas a forward compatible system needs to cope gracefully with unknown future features. An example of future compatibility is the stipulation that a web browser should ignore HTML tags it does not recognise. See also extensible.
  • franco-belgian system — French system.
  • garbageabetical order — (humour)   1. The result of using an insertion sort to merge data into an unsorted list. 2. The state of any file or list that is supposed to be sorted, but is not.
  • generic type variable — (programming)   (Also known as a "schematic type variable"). Different occurrences of a generic type variable in a type expression may be instantiated to different types. Thus, in the expression let id x = x in (id True, id 1) id's type is (for all a: a -> a). The universal quantifier "for all a:" means that a is a generic type variable. For the two uses of id, a is instantiated to Bool and Int. Compare this with let id x = x in let f g = (g True, g 1) in f id This looks similar but f has no legal Hindley-Milner type. If we say f :: (a -> b) -> (b, b) this would permit g's type to be any instance of (a -> b) rather than requiring it to be at least as general as (a -> b). Furthermore, it constrains both instances of g to have the same result type whereas they do not. The type variables a and b in the above are implicitly quantified at the top level: f :: for all a: for all b: (a -> b) -> (b, b) so instantiating them (removing the quantifiers) can only be done once, at the top level. To correctly describe the type of f requires that they be locally quantified: f :: ((for all a: a) -> (for all b: b)) -> (c, d) which means that each time g is applied, a and b may be instantiated differently. f's actual argument must have a type at least as general as ((for all a: a) -> (for all b: b)), and may not be some less general instance of this type. Type variables c and d are still implicitly quantified at the top level and, now that g's result type is a generic type variable, any types chosen for c and d are guaranteed to be instances of it. This type for f does not express the fact that b only needs to be at least as general as the types c and d. For example, if c and d were both Bool then any function of type (for all a: a -> Bool) would be a suitable argument to f but it would not match the above type for f.
  • give sb a green light — If someone in authority gives you a green light, they give you permission to do something.
  • gold bullion standard — a gold standard in which gold is not coined but may be purchased at a fixed price for foreign exchange.
  • hierarchical database — (database)   A kind of database management system that links records together like a family tree such that each record type has only one owner, e.g. an order is owned by only one customer. Hierarchical structures were widely used in the first mainframe database management systems. However, due to their restrictions, they often cannot be used to relate structures that exist in the real world.
  • horizontal stabilizer — the horizontal surface, usually fixed, of an aircraft empennage, to which the elevator is hinged.
  • horizontal tabulation — (character)   (tab, Control-I, HT, ASCII 9) A character which when displayed or printed causes the following character to be placed at the next "tabstop" - the column whose number is a multiple of the current tab width. Commonly (especially in Unix(?)) the tab width is eight, so, counting from the left margin (column zero), the tab stops are at columns 8, 16, 24, up to the width of the screen or page. A tab width of four or two is often preferred when indenting program source code to conserve indentation. Represented as "\t" in C, Unix, and derivatives.
  • hubble classification — a method of classifying galaxies depending on whether they are elliptical, spiral, barred spiral, or irregular
  • imprecise probability — (probability)   A probability that is represented as an interval (as opposed to a single number) included in [0,1].
  • international brigade — a military force that fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, consisting of volunteers (predominantly socialists and communists) from many countries
  • intersubstitutability — a person or thing acting or serving in place of another.
  • keep the ball rolling — a spherical or approximately spherical body or shape; sphere: He rolled the piece of paper into a ball.
  • knights of st columba — an international, semi-secret fraternal and charitable order for Catholic laymen, which originated in New Haven, Connecticut in 1882 (the Knights of Columbus)
  • laboratory technician — sb who assists in a laboratory
  • lambeth quadrilateral — the four essentials agreed upon at the Lambeth Conference of 1888 for a United Christian Church, namely, the Holy Scriptures, the Apostles' Creed, the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion, and the historic episcopate
  • language-based editor — language-sensitive editor
  • lap and diagonal belt — A lap and diagonal belt is a strap attached to a seat in a vehicle that extends horizontally in front of the hips and diagonally from the outer shoulder across the chest. You fasten it across your body in order to prevent yourself being thrown out of the seat if there is a sudden movement or stop.
  • least significant bit — (data)   (LSB) Bit zero, the bit of a binary number giving the number of ones, the last or rightmost bit when the number is written in the usual way.
  • leave holding the bag — a container or receptacle of leather, plastic, cloth, paper, etc., capable of being closed at the mouth; pouch.
  • leave sb in the lurch — If someone leaves you in the lurch, they go away or stop helping you at a very difficult time.
  • liability engineering — the practice by a company of taking steps to avoid liability for any fraudulent dealings with it, such as making a credit-card owner responsible for any abuses of the card by a third party
  • long-term liabilities — Long-term liabilities are debts that a company does not have to pay back for a year or more.
  • magnetic permeability — permeability (def 2).
  • magnificent riflebird — a bird of paradise, Craspedophora magnifica
  • maître d'hôtel butter — melted butter mixed with parsley and lemon juice
  • marketable securities — Marketable securities are securities that can easily be sold quickly on the open market.
  • megaloblastic anaemia — any anaemia, esp pernicious anaemia, characterized by the presence of megaloblasts in the blood or bone marrow
  • national public radio — a nationwide network of nonprofit radio stations supported in part by U.S. government funds distributed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, often affiliated with a public television station or educational institution. Abbreviation: NPR.
  • national savings bank — (in Britain) a government savings bank, run through the post office, esp for small savers
  • negotiable instrument — order or promise to pay money
  • negotiable securities — securities that are legally transferable in title from one party to another
  • northumberland strait — the part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence that separates Prince Edward Island from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, in SE Canada. About 200 miles (320 km) long; 9–30 miles (15–48 km) wide.
  • objective correlative — a completely depicted situation or chain of events that objectifies a particular emotion in such a way as to produce or evoke that emotion in the reader.
  • observation satellite — an unmanned satellite that observes the earth and gathers data
  • optical double (star) — double star (sense 2)
  • past its sell-by date — the last date on which perishable food should be sold, usually established with some allowance for home storage under refrigeration. Compare shelf life.
  • pipelined burst cache — Pipeline Burst Cache
  • poor robin's plantain — the rattlesnake weed, Hieracium venosum.
  • posterior probability — the probability assigned to some parameter or to an event on the basis of its observed frequency in a sample, and calculated from a prior probability by Bayes' theorem
  • private member's bill — In Britain, a Private Member's Bill is a law that is proposed by a Member of Parliament acting as an individual rather than as a member of his or her political party.
  • propantheline bromide — a substance, C 2 3 H 3 0 BrNO 3 , used in the treatment of peptic ulcers.
  • public address system — loudspeaker
  • public administration — the implementation of public policy, largely by the executive branch.
  • public health service — the agency that is responsible for the health of the general public
  • public transportation — means of fare-paying travel
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