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18-letter words containing a, l, s, i

  • applied psychology — psychology that is put to practical use
  • appraisal drilling — (in the oil industry) drilling carried out once oil or gas has been discovered in order to assess the extent of the field, the reserves, the possible rate of production, and the properties of the oil or gas
  • arbitration clause — a clause in a contract laying down that disputes between the parties should be settled by arbitration
  • aristotelian logic — the logical theories of Aristotle as developed in the Middle Ages, concerned mainly with syllogistic reasoning: traditional as opposed to modern or symbolic logic
  • aristotles-lantern — a complex arrangement of muscles and calcareous teeth and plates forming an eversible organ in most echinoids, functioning in mastication.
  • arm's-length price — a price of a transaction agreed in accordance with market values, disregarding any connection such as common ownership of the companies involved
  • arsenic trisulfide — a yellow or red crystalline substance, As 2 S 3 , occurring in nature as the mineral orpiment, and used as a pigment (king's yellow) and in pyrotechnics.
  • as far as possible — to the greatest possible extent
  • asciibetical order — (jargon, programming)   /as'kee-be'-t*-kl or'dr/ Used to indicate that data is sorted in ASCII collated order rather than alphabetical order. The main difference is that, in ASCII, all the upper case letters come before any of the lower case letters so, e.g., "Z" comes before "a".
  • asiatic black bear — a bear, Selenarctos thibetanus, of central and E Asia, whose coat is black with a pale V-shaped mark on the chest
  • aspherical surface — a lens or mirror surface that does not form part of a sphere and is used to reduce aberrations
  • assignment problem — (mathematics, algorithm)   (Or "linear assignment") Any problem involving minimising the sum of C(a, b) over a set P of pairs (a, b) where a is an element of some set A and b is an element of set B, and C is some function, under constraints such as "each element of A must appear exactly once in P" or similarly for B, or both. For example, the a's could be workers and the b's projects. The problem is "linear" because the "cost function" C() depends only on the particular pairing (a, b) and is independent of all other pairings.
  • astrological chart — map of constellations at certain time
  • astronomical clock — a complex clock showing astronomical phenomena, such as the phases of the moon
  • asynchronous logic — (architecture)   A data-driven circuit design technique where, instead of the components sharing a common clock and exchanging data on clock edges, data is passed on as soon as it is available. This removes the need to distribute a common clock signal throughout the circuit with acceptable clock skew. It also helps to reduce power dissipation in CMOS circuits because gates only switch when they are doing useful work rather than on every clock edge. There are many kinds of asynchronous logic. Data signals may use either "dual rail encoding" or "data bundling". Each dual rail encoded Boolean is implemented as two wires. This allows the value and the timing information to be communicated for each data bit. Bundled data has one wire for each data bit and another for timing. Level sensitive circuits typically represent a logic one by a high voltage and a logic zero by a low voltage whereas transition signalling uses a change in the signal level to convey information. A speed independent design is tolerant to variations in gate speeds but not to propagation delays in wires; a delay insensitive circuit is tolerant to variations in wire delays as well. The purest form of circuit is delay-insensitive and uses dual-rail encoding with transition signalling. A transition on one wire indicates the arrival of a zero, a transition on the other the arrival of a one. The levels on the wires are of no significance. Such an approach enables the design of fully delay-insensitive circuits and automatic layout as the delays introduced by the layout compiler can't affect the functionality (only the performance). Level sensitive designs can use simpler, stateless logic gates but require a "return to zero" phase in each transition.
  • at the last minute — almost too late
  • athletic supporter — jockstrap
  • australian doubles — an unusual formation in doubles in which the server's partner is positioned on the same side of the court as the server.
  • australian terrier — a small wire-haired breed of terrier similar to the cairn
  • australopithecines — Plural form of australopithecine.
  • axiological ethics — the branch of ethics dealing primarily with the relative goodness or value of the motives and end of any action.
  • axis of revolution — an axis in a plane, about which an area is revolved to form a solid of revolution.
  • back in the saddle — at work again
  • ballistic pendulum — a device consisting of a large mass hung from a horizontal bar by two rods, used to measure the velocity of an object, as a bullet, by retaining the object upon impact, its velocity being a function of the displacement of the mass.
  • ballistocardiogram — a tracing made by a ballistocardiograph
  • barium thiosulfate — a white, crystalline, water-insoluble, poisonous solid, BaS 2 O 3 ⋅H 2 O, used chiefly in the manufacture of explosives, matches, paints, and varnishes.
  • bartholin's glands — two small reddish-yellow glands, one on each side of the vaginal orifice, that secrete a mucous lubricating substance during sexual stimulation in females
  • bats-in-the-belfry — a hairy Eurasian campanulaceous plant, Campanula trachelium, with bell-shaped blue-purple flowers
  • beaujolais nouveau — the first Beaujolais wine of the season, usually available for sale within two months after the grapes are harvested.
  • behavioral science — any of several studies, as sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc., that examine human activities in an attempt to discover recurrent patterns and to formulate rules about social behavior
  • bellingshausen sea — an area of the S Pacific Ocean off the coast of Antarctica
  • bells and whistles — additional features or accessories which are nonessential but very attractive
  • bilateral symmetry — the property of an organism or part of an organism such that, if cut in only one plane, the two cut halves are mirror images of each other
  • bill of quantities — a document drawn up by a quantity surveyor providing details of the prices, dimensions, etc, of the materials required to build a large structure, such as a factory
  • biological parents — the biological mother and father of a child
  • bipolar transistor — (electronics)   A transistor made from a sandwich of n- and p-type semiconductor material: either npn or pnp. The middle section is known as the "base" and the other two as the "collector" and "emitter". When used as an amplifying element, the base to emitter junction is in a "forward-biased" (conducting) condition, and the base to collector junction is "reverse-biased" or non-conducting. Small changes in the base to emitter current (the input signal) cause either holes (for pnp devices) or free electrons (for npn) to enter the base from the emitter. The attracting voltage of the collector causes the majority of these charges to cross into and be collected by the collector, resulting in amplification. Contrast field effect transistor.
  • biz-core stability — (security)   Internet security products which secure the business core.
  • black lives matter — a political and social movement originating among African Americans, emphasizing basic human rights and racial equality for black people and campaigning against various forms of racism. Abbreviations: BLM, B.L.M.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • blue-plate special — an inexpensive restaurant meal served at a fixed price on a large plate, originally blue
  • 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.
  • brazilian sapphire — a blue variety of tourmaline used as a gem: not a true sapphire.
  • 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.
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