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22-letter words containing a, r, i

  • better business bureau — any of a nationwide system of local organizations, supported by business, whose function is to receive and investigate customer complaints of dishonest business practices. Abbreviation: BBB.
  • between wind and water — the part of a vessel's hull below the water line that is exposed by rolling or by wave action
  • bharatiya janata party — an Indian political party that promotes Hindu nationalism
  • bidirectional printing — (hardware)   A feature of a printer whose printer head can print both when moving left to right and when moving right to left. Also known as "boustrophedonic".
  • big bend national park — a national park in W Texas, on the Rio Grande. 1080 sq. mi. (2800 sq. km).
  • biological engineering — bioengineering.
  • biomedical engineering — bioengineering (def 1).
  • black mercuric sulfide — a crystalline, water-insoluble, poisonous compound, HgS, occurring as a coarse, black powder (black mercuric sulfide) or as a fine, bright-scarlet powder (red mercuric sulfide) used chiefly as a pigment and as a source of the free metal.
  • bleeding-heart liberal — a person of left-wing or liberal views who is deemed to be excessively soft-hearted
  • block diagram compiler — (simulation, language)   (BDL) A block diagram simulation tool, with associated language.
  • blue-winged kookaburra — a related smaller bird D. Leachii, of tropical Australia and New Guinea
  • board of commissioners — the administrative body of a county in many U.S. states, especially in the South and the West, having from two to seven elected members.
  • book of original entry — a book in which transactions are recorded before being transferred into a ledger.
  • borderline personality — Psychiatry. a personality disorder characterized by instability in many areas, as mood, identity, self-image, and behavior, and often manifested by impulsive actions, suicide attempts, inappropriate anger, or depression.
  • bosnia and herzegovina — country in SE Europe: it came under Turkish rule in the 15th cent. and under Austro-Hungarian control in 1878: it was part of Yugoslavia (1918-91): 19,741 sq mi (51,129 sq km); pop. 4,366,000; cap. Sarajevo
  • brachiocephalic artery — a major artery, arising from the arch of the aorta, that supplies blood to the right arm and the head.
  • break (or keep) faith — to be disloyal (or loyal) to one's beliefs, principles, etc.
  • bridge of san luis rey — a novel (1927) by Thornton Wilder.
  • bring down the curtain — If something brings down the curtain on an event or situation, it causes or marks the end of it.
  • british library method — (algorithm)   Brute force searching. According to legends circulating in the 1970s, in the British Library books are searched for by examining each book sequentially in the first shelf, then the next shelf, continuing until the book is found or the entire library has been searched. The term was referred to in a Dutch coursebook, "Inleiding In De Informatica" (Introduction to Informatics) from a course given by C.H.A. Koster and Th.A. Zoethout. This was based on a course given at the TU Berlin.
  • british national party — a far-right political party
  • british virgin islands — a UK Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, consisting of 36 islands in the E Virgin Islands: formerly part of the Federation of the Leeward Islands (1871–1956). Capital: Road Town, on Tortola. Pop: 31 912 (2013 est). Area: 153 sq km (59 sq miles)
  • bug-for-bug compatible — Same as bug-compatible, with the additional implication that much tedious effort went into ensuring that each (known) bug was replicated.
  • c programmer's disease — (programming)   The tendency of the undisciplined C programmer to set arbitrary but supposedly generous static limits on table sizes (defined, if you're lucky, by constants in header files) rather than taking the trouble to do proper dynamic storage allocation. If an application user later needs to put 68 elements into a table of size 50, the afflicted programmer reasons that he or she can easily reset the table size to 68 (or even as much as 70, to allow for future expansion) and recompile. This gives the programmer the comfortable feeling of having made the effort to satisfy the user's (unreasonable) demands, and often affords the user multiple opportunities to explore the marvellous consequences of fandango on core. In severe cases of the disease, the programmer cannot comprehend why each fix of this kind seems only to further disgruntle the user.
  • calculus of variations — a branch of calculus concerned with maxima and minima of definite integrals
  • cargo cult programming — (programming, humour)   A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. A cargo cult programmer will usually explain the extra code as a way of working around some bug encountered in the past, but usually neither the bug nor the reason the code apparently avoided the bug was ever fully understood (compare shotgun debugging, voodoo programming). The term "cargo cult" is a reference to aboriginal religions that grew up in the South Pacific after World War II. The practices of these cults centre on building elaborate mockups of aeroplanes and military style landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of the god-like aeroplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war. Hackish usage probably derives from Richard Feynman's characterisation of certain practices as "cargo cult science" in his book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" (W. W. Norton & Co, New York 1985, ISBN 0-393-01921-7).
  • catalyst transfer line — A catalyst transfer line is equipment which provides a smooth and constant catalyst flow.
  • categorical imperative — (in the ethics of Kant) the unconditional moral principle that one's behaviour should accord with universalizable maxims which respect persons as ends in themselves; the obligation to do one's duty for its own sake and not in pursuit of further ends
  • catoctin mountain park — a federal park in N central Maryland: site of Camp David. 9 sq. mi. (23 sq. km).
  • cease-and-desist order — an order by a government agency to a person or corporation to terminate a business practice found by the agency to be illegal or unfair.
  • centimeter-gram-second — designating or of a system of measurement in which the centimeter, gram, and second are the units of length, mass, and time, respectively
  • central african empire — a former name (1976–79) of Central African Republic.
  • central locking device — a small device that controls the central locking on a motor vehicle
  • ceramic pin grid array — (hardware, processor)   (CPGA) A form of Pin Grid Array package used by Cyrix III processors. Compare PPGA and FC-PGA.
  • certificate of deposit — a negotiable certificate issued by a bank in return for a deposit of money for a term of up to five years
  • charity begins at home — If you say charity begins at home, you mean that people should deal with the needs of people close to them before they think about helping others.
  • chicago board of trade — a major exchange in the United States that deals in futures, notably of grains and metals. Abbreviation: CBT.
  • chief academic officer — an official in a university, college, or medical school who usually reports directly to the president, chancellor, rector, or vice chancellor
  • chinese army technique — Mongolian Hordes technique
  • chinese water chestnut — a Chinese cyperaceous plant, Eleocharis tuberosa, with an edible succulent corm
  • chlorotrifluoromethane — a colorless gas, CClF 3 , used chiefly as a refrigerant, in the hardening of metals, and in pharmaceutical processing.
  • chorionic gonadotropin — Also called human chorionic gonadotropin. Biochemistry. a hormone, produced in the incipient placenta of pregnant women, that stimulates the production of estrogen and progesterone: its presence in blood or urine is an indication of pregnancy.
  • chromosomal aberration — any irregularity or abnormality of chromosome distribution, number, structure, or arrangement.
  • classified advertising — advertising compactly arranged, as in newspaper columns, according to subject, under such listings as help wanted and lost and found
  • client-centred therapy — a form of psychotherapy in which the therapist makes no attempt to interpret what the patient says but encourages him or her to develop his or her own attitudes and insights, often by questioning
  • cognitive architecture — (architecture)   A computer architecure involving non-deterministic, multiple inference processes, as found in neural networks. Cognitive architectures model the human brain and contrast with single processor computers. The term might also refer to software architectures, e.g. fuzzy logic.
  • collateral circulation — circulation of blood through a network of minor vessels that become enlarged and joined with adjacent vessels when a major vein or artery is impaired, as by obstruction.
  • color graphics adapter — (hardware, graphics)   (CGA) One of IBM's earliest hardware video display standards for use in IBM PCs. CGA can display 80*25 or 40*25 text in 16 colors, 640*200 pixels of graphics in two colors or 320*200 in four colors (IBM PC video modes 0-6). It is now obsolete.
  • combinatorial analysis — the branch of mathematics concerned with the theory of enumeration, or combinations and permutations, in order to solve problems about the possibility of constructing arrangements of objects which satisfy specified conditions
  • combinatorial topology — the branch of topology that deals with the properties of geometric figures by considering the figures as being composed of elementary geometric figures, as points or lines.
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