22-letter words containing a, t, s, b

disposable soma theory — the theory that ageing is caused by the body having increasingly fewer resources to allocate towards repairing wear and damage to tissues
distributed generation — A distributed generation system involves a person or company generating some of their power requirements in different ways, such as locally, or using renewable energy, in order to avoid taking it all from the grid.
distributive education — a special program of vocational education at the high-school level in which a student is employed part-time, receiving on-the-job training, and also attends classes, most of which pertain directly to the student's vocational field.
dog's dinner/breakfast — You describe something as a dog's breakfast or dog's dinner in order to express your disapproval of it, for example because it is very untidy, badly organized, or badly done.
dread high bit disease — (character) A condition endemic to PRIME (also known as "PR1ME") minicomputers that results in all the characters having their high bit (0x80, see meta bit) ON rather than OFF. This complicates transporting files to other systems and talking to true 8-bit devices. Folklore had it that PRIME adopted the convention in order to save 25 cents per serial line per machine; PRIME old-timers, on the other hand, claim they inherited the disease from Honeywell via customer NASA's compatibility requirements and struggled heroically to cure it. Whoever was responsible, this probably qualifies as one of the most cretinous design tradeoffs ever made. A few other machines have exhibited similar brain damage.
end transmission block — (character) (ETB) The mnemonic for ASCII character 23.
fifth earl of rosebery — Archibald Philip Primrose [prim-rohz] /ˈprɪmˌroʊz/ (Show IPA), 5th Earl of, 1847–1929, British statesman and author: prime minister 1894–95.
first cab off the rank — the first person, etc, to do or take advantage of something
fort benjamin harrison — a military reservation and U.S. Army training center in central Indiana, NE of Indianapolis.
full english breakfast — morning meal of eggs, bacon, etc.
get off someone's back — to stop criticizing or pestering someone
go for all the marbles — to take a great risk in the hope of a great gain
great australian bight — a wide bay in S Australia.
gum bichromate process — a contact printing method in which the image is formed on a coating of sensitized gum containing a suitable colored pigment and potassium or ammonium dichromate.
hamishah asar bishevat — Tu Bishevat.
have a way with sth/sb — If you say that a person has a way with something or someone, you mean that that person seems to have a natural skill or instinct for dealing with them.
have all one's buttons — a small disk, knob, or the like for sewing or otherwise attaching to an article, as of clothing, serving as a fastening when passed through a buttonhole or loop.
hepatitis non-a, non-b — a disease of the liver that is clinically indistinguishable from hepatitis B but is caused by a retrovirus or retroviruslike agent.
hubble space telescope — U.S. Aerospace. a 7.9-foot (2.4-meter) optical telescope designed for use in orbit around the earth.
in one's birthday suit — naked; nude
in/within sb's hearing — If someone says something in your hearing or within your hearing, you can hear what they say because they are with you or near you.
inertia-reel seat belt — a type of car seat belt in which the belt is free to unwind from a metal drum except when the drum locks as a result of rapid deceleration
interoperable database — A database front-end which communicates with multiple heterogenous databases and makes them appear as a single homogenous entity with semantic calls. See ODBC.
islands of the blessed — lands where the souls of heroes and good men were taken after death
it's london to a brick — it is certain
jack and the beanstalk — an English fairy tale about a boy who angers his mother by selling their last cow, not for money, but for magic beans. His mother throws the beans away, but the next day Jack discovers that they have sprouted into a giant beanstalk. He climbs the beanstalk three times, each time stealing some treasure from the giant who lives in a land in the clouds at the top. Jack ultimately kills the giant by chopping down the beanstalk while the giant is climbing down it
justification by works — the belief that a person becomes just before God by the performance of good works: the doctrine against which Luther protested in inaugurating the Protestant Reformation.
knowledge-based system — (artificial intelligence) (KBS) A program for extending and/or querying a knowledge base. The related term expert system is normally used to refer to a highly domain-specific type of KBS used for a specialised purpose such as medical diagnosis. The Cyc project is an example of a large KBS.
label switching router — (networking) (LSR) A device that typically resides somewhere in the middle of a network and is capable of forwarding datagrams by label switching. In many cases, especially early versions of MPLS networks, a LSR will typically be a modified ATM switch that forwards datagrams based upon a label in the VPI/VCI field.
lady's not for burning — a verse play (1948) by Christopher Fry.
lesser cornstalk borer — the larva of a widely distributed pyralid moth, Elasmopalpus lignosellus, that damages corn and some other crops by boring into the part of the stalk close to the soil.
little st bernard pass — a pass over the Savoy Alps, between Bourg-Saint-Maurice, France, and La Thuile, Italy: 11th-century hospice. Height: 2187 m (7177 ft)
lund software house ab — (company) The company who produced Lund Simula. Address: Box 7056, S-22007 Lund, Sweden.
make a beeline for sth — If you make a beeline for a place, you go to it as quickly and directly as possible.
make a clean breast of — Anatomy, Zoology. (in bipeds) the outer, front part of the thorax, or the front part of the body from the neck to the abdomen; chest.
make contact (with sb) — If you make contact with someone, you find out where they are and talk or write to them.
manuel estrada cabrera — Manuel [mah-nwel] /mɑˈnwɛl/ (Show IPA), 1857–1924, Guatemalan politician: president 1898–1920.
metasyntactic variable — (grammar) Strictly, a variable used in metasyntax, but often used for any name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under discussion. The word foo is the canonical example. To avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use "foo" or other words like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a scratch file that may be deleted at any time. To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here are a few common signatures: bazola, ztesch: Stanford (from mid-'70s on). zxc, spqr, wombat: Cambridge University (England). shme: Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short /e/. blarg, wibble: New Zealand Of all these, only "foo" and "bar" are universal (and baz nearly so). The compounds foobar and "foobaz" also enjoy very wide currency. Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; barf and mumble, for example. See also Commonwealth Hackish for discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the Commonwealth.
mutton dressed as lamb — If you describe a woman as mutton dressed as lamb, you are criticizing her for trying to look younger than she really is, in a way that you consider unattractive.
nassella tussock board — one of many local statutory organizations set up in different regions of New Zealand to eradicate the invasive nassella tussock weed
non-maskable interrupt — (NMI) An IRQ 7 on the PDP-11 or 680x0 or the NMI line on an 80x86. In contrast with a priority interrupt (which might be ignored, although that is unlikely), an NMI is *never* ignored.
not be sb's department — If you say that a task or area of knowledge is not your department, you mean that you are not responsible for it or do not know much about it.
object-oriented pascal — Object Pascal
on a shoestring budget — with very little money to spend
peanut-butter sandwich — a sandwich with a filling of peanut-butter
portable standard lisp — (language) (PSL) A dialect of Lisp from Utah University. PSL is available as a kit for 68000 and also runs on VAX. It compiles Lisp to C-code virtual machine language.
preestablished harmony — (in the philosophy of Leibnitz) synchronous operation of all monads, since their simultaneous creation, in accordance with the preexisting plan of God.
probationary assistant — a teacher in the first probationary years
public domain software — public domain
pulmonary tuberculosis — tuberculosis of the lungs.

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