25-letter words containing a, b, t
- fully lazy lambda lifting — John Hughes's optimisation of lambda lifting to give full laziness. Maximal free expressions are shared to minimise the amount of recalculation. Each inner sub-expression is replaced by a function of its maximal free expressions (expressions not containing any bound variable) applied to those expressions. E.g. f = \ x . (\ y . (+) (sqrt x) y) ((+) (sqrt x)) is a maximal free expression in (\ y . (+) (sqrt x) y) so this inner abstraction is replaced with (\ g . \ y . g y) ((+) (sqrt x)) Now, if a partial application of f is shared, the result of evaluating (sqrt x) will also be shared rather than re-evaluated on each application of f. As Chin notes, the same benefit could be achieved without introducing the new higher-order function, g, if we just extracted out (sqrt x). This is similar to the code motion optimisation in procedural languages where constant expressions are moved outside a loop or procedure.
- gabriel daniel fahrenheit — Gabriel Daniel [German gah-bree-el dah-nee-el] /German ˈgɑ briˌɛl ˈdɑ niˌɛl/ (Show IPA), 1686–1736, German physicist: devised a temperature scale and introduced the use of mercury in thermometers.
- give sb pause for thought — If something gives you pause for thought, it makes you think carefully about something, especially in a different way than you have thought about it before.
- give someone the dingbats — to make someone nervous
- global positioning system — GPS (def 1).
- guantánamo bay naval base — a US naval base on Guantánamo Bay; since 2002, a detainment camp for suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives
- hailsham of st marylebone — Baron, title of Quintin (McGarel) Hogg (ˈkwɪntɪn). 1907–2001, British Conservative politician; Lord Chancellor (1970–74; 1979–87). He renounced his viscountcy in 1963 when he made an unsuccessful bid for the Conservative Party leadership; he became a life peer in 1970
- hand sth to sb on a plate — If you say that someone has things handed to them on a plate, you disapprove of them because they get good things easily.
- have bats in one's belfry — any of numerous flying mammals of the order Chiroptera, of worldwide distribution in tropical and temperate regions, having modified forelimbs that serve as wings and are covered with a membranous skin extending to the hind limbs.
- have one's wits about one — the keen perception and cleverly apt expression of those connections between ideas that awaken amusement and pleasure. Synonyms: drollery, facetiousness, waggishness, repartee.
- hoist by one's own petard — an explosive device formerly used in warfare to blow in a door or gate, form a breach in a wall, etc.
- house of the seven gables — a novel (1851) by Hawthorne.
- human embryonic stem cell — a stem cell obtained from the blastocyst of a human embryo
- i don't know (about that) — You can use I don't know to indicate that you do not completely agree with something or do not really think that it is true.
- immigration border patrol — (in the US) a law enforcement agency responsible for issues regarding border laws and immigration
- in (or out of) mothballs — put into (or taken from) a condition of being stored or in reserve
- in the foreseeable future — If you say that something will happen in the foreseeable future you mean that you think it will happen fairly soon.
- industrial injury benefit — money paid to an employee who has been injured or who has developed a disease because of their job, and who is consequently unable to work
- industrial rehabilitation — the treatment of people who have acquired a disability or disease during the course of their work, with the aim of allowing them to return to work or to a new job
- industrial robot language — (language, robotics) (IRL) A high-level language for programming industrial robots.
- initial teaching alphabet — a 44 letter phonetic alphabet used mainly in the 1960s for teaching children to read and write
- intermediate vector boson — one of the three particles that are believed to transmit the weak force: the positively charged W particle, the negatively charged W particle, and the neutral Z 0 particle.
- it is a good/bad thing to — You say it is a good thing to do something to introduce a piece of advice or a comment on a situation or activity.
- jakob-creutzfeldt disease — Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
- jean-maurice-Émile baudot — (person) (1845-1903) The inventor of the Baudot code. Baudot joined the French Post & Telegraph Administration in 1869 as a telegraph operator. In his own time he developed a code for sending several messages at once. In 1874 Baudot patented his first printing telegraph where signals were translated onto paper tape. The Baudot code was adopted first in France and then by other nations for
and transmissions. The unit of transmission speed, baud, is named after him. - keep one's wits about one — the keen perception and cleverly apt expression of those connections between ideas that awaken amusement and pleasure. Synonyms: drollery, facetiousness, waggishness, repartee.
- leaf distribution limited — A UK connectivity software supplier which also provides SERVELAN, a country-wide Internet access service. E-mail: <[email protected]>. Address: 7 Elmwood, Chineham Business Park, Crockford Lane, BASINGSTOKE RG24 0WG. Telephone: +44 (1256) 707 777. Fax: +44 (1256) 707 555.
- limited liability company — a company which operates with limited liability
- maintenance of membership — an arrangement or agreement between an employer and a labor union by which employees who are members of the union at the time the agreement is made, or who subsequently join, must either remain members until the agreement expires, or be discharged.
- make a thing about/out of — If you make a thing of something or make a thing about it, you talk about it or do it in an exaggerated way, so that it seems much more important than it really is.
- make bricks without straw — a block of clay hardened by drying in the sun or burning in a kiln, and used for building, paving, etc.: traditionally, in the U.S., a rectangle 2.25 × 3.75 × 8 inches (5.7 × 9.5 × 20.3 cm), red, brown, or yellow in color.
- make short work of sb/sth — If you make short work of someone or something, you deal with them or defeat them very quickly.
- massachusetts bay company — a company, chartered in England in 1629 to establish a colony on Massachusetts Bay, that founded Boston in 1630.
- minimal brain dysfunction — (no longer in technical use) attention deficit disorder.
- multi-scene control board — preset board.
- narrow-leaved bottle tree — any of several trees of the genus Brachychiton, native to Australia, characterized by a bottle-shaped swelling of the trunk, as B. rupestris (narrow-leaved bottle tree) or B. australis (broad-leaved bottle tree)
- national enterprise board — a public corporation established in 1975 to help the economy of the UK. In 1981 it merged with the National Research and Development Council to form the British Technology Group
- national insurance number — a number allocated to UK citizens so that they can pay national insurance
- national liberation front — the name taken by nationalist insurgent groups in various countries.
- never do things by halves — If you say that someone never does things by halves, you mean that they always do things very thoroughly.
- northern corn-leaf blight — northern leaf blight.
- object relational mapping — (programming, database) (ORM) The software development activity that defines a correspondence between objects in a program and rows in a database table. Atomic object properties correspond to columns in the table, non-atomic data types and relations between objects are represented as foreign keys referring to other tables. An object persistence mechanism is responsible for maintaining the correspondence between objects and the database contents at run-time.
- observational equivalence — Two terms M and N are observationally equivalent iff for all contexts C[] where C[M] is a valid term, C[N] is also a valid term with the same value.
- off-balance sheet reserve — a sum of money or an asset that should appear on a company's balance but does not; hidden reserve
- on the big/small etc side — If you say that something is on the small side, you are saying politely that you think it is slightly too small. If you say that someone is on the young side, you are saying politely that you think they are slightly too young.
- outside broadcasting unit — a mobile studio from which broadcasts are made
- party political broadcast — A party political broadcast is a short broadcast on radio or television made by a political party, especially before an election. It explains their views and often criticizes other political parties.
- personalized number plate — a car registration plate that has the owner's initials or name on it
- pit one's wits against sb — If you pit your wits against someone, you compete with them in a test of knowledge or intelligence.
- portable network graphics — (file format) /ping/ (PNG) An extensible file format for the lossless, portable, well-compressed storage of raster images. PNG provides a patent-free replacement for GIF and can also replace many common uses of TIFF. Indexed-colour, greyscale and truecolour images are supported, plus an optional alpha channel. Sample depths range from 1 to 16 bits. PNG is designed for on-line viewing applications, such as the World Wide Web, so it is fully streamable with a progressive display option. PNG is robust, providing both full file integrity checking and simple detection of common transmission errors. Also, PNG can store gamma correction and chromaticity data for improved colour matching on heterogeneous platforms.