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20-letter words containing b, a, c, t

  • fontainebleau school — a group of artists, many of them Italian and Flemish, who worked on the decorations of the palace of Fontainebleau in the 16th century.
  • for sb's delectation — If you do something for someone's delectation, you do it to give them enjoyment or pleasure.
  • front-to-back engine — an engine in which the crankshaft is arranged front to back along the axis of the vehicle
  • gorno-altai republic — a constituent republic of S Russia: mountainous, rising over 4350 m (14 500 ft) in the Altai Mountains of the south. Capital: Gorno-Altaisk. Pop: 202 900 (2002). Area: 92 600 sq km (35 740 sq miles)
  • hit the panic button — an alarm button for use in an emergency, as to summon help.
  • hyperbolic cotangent — a hyperbolic function that is the ratio of cosh to sinh, being the reciprocal of tanh; coth
  • in a class by itself — unique
  • in bad circumstances — (of a person) in a bad financial situation
  • in contact (with sb) — If you are in contact with someone, you regularly meet them or communicate with them.
  • in the public domain — able to be discussed and examined freely by the general public
  • indian cucumber root — a North American plant, Medeola virginiana, of the lily family, having whorled leaves, nodding, greenish-yellow flowers, and an edible root.
  • job control language — a language used to construct statements that identify a particular job to be run and specify the job's requirements to the operating system under which it will run. Abbreviation: JCL.
  • justifiable homicide — murder committed under extenuating circumstances
  • like a ton of bricks — (used esp of the manner of punishing or reprimanding someone) with great force; severely
  • longitude by account — the longitude of the position of a vessel as estimated by dead reckoning.
  • massachusetts ballot — a ballot on which the candidates, with their party designations, are listed alphabetically in columns under the office for which they were nominated.
  • megabytes per second — (unit)   (MBps, MB/s) Millions of bytes per second. A unit of data rate. 1 MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes per second (not 1,048,576).
  • meta-dichlorobenzene — a colorless liquid, C 6 H 4 Cl 2 , soluble in alcohol and ether: used as a fumigant and insecticide.
  • methylbenzyl acetate — methylphenylcarbinyl acetate.
  • miliary tuberculosis — tuberculosis in which the bacilli are spread by the blood from one point of infection, producing small tubercles in other parts of the body.
  • moreton bay chestnut — an Australian leguminous tree, Castanospermum australe, having thin smooth bark and yellow or reddish flowers: used in furniture manufacture
  • most significant bit — (MSB) Bit n-1 in an n bit binary number, the bit with the greatest weight (2^(n-1)). The first or leftmost bit when the number is written in the usual way.
  • multiplication table — Arithmetic. a tabular listing of the products of any two numbers of a set, usually of the integers 1 through 10 or 1 through 12.
  • nickel tetracarbonyl — nickel carbonyl.
  • nictitating membrane — a thin membrane, or inner or third eyelid, present in many animals, capable of being drawn across the eyeball, as for protection.
  • obfuscated c contest — (programming)   The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC) is an annual contest run since 1984 over Usenet by Landon Curt Noll and friends. The overall winner is whoever produces the most unreadable, creative, and bizarre (but working) C program. Various other prizes are awarded at the judges' whim. C's terse syntax and macro-preprocessor facilities give contestants a lot of maneuvering room. The winning programs often manage to be simultaneously funny, breathtaking works of art and horrible examples of how *not* to code in C. This relatively short and sweet hello, world program demonstrates obfuscated C: /* HELLO WORLD program * by Jack Applin and Robert Heckendorn, 1985 */ main(v,c)char**c;{for(v[c++]="Hello, world!\n)"; (!!c)[*c]&&(v--||--c&&execlp(*c,*c,c[!!c]+!!c,!c)); **c=!c)write(!!*c,*c,!!**c);} Here's another good one: /* Program to compute an approximation of pi * by Brian Westley, 1988 */ #define _ -F<00||--F-OO--; int F=00,OO=00; main(){F_OO();printf("%1.3f\n",4.*-F/OO/OO);}F_OO() { _-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_ } Note that this program works by computing its own area. For more digits, write a bigger program.
  • objective relativism — the doctrine that knowledge of real objects is relative to the individual.
  • off the beaten track — formed or shaped by blows; hammered: a dish of beaten brass.
  • particle beam weapon — a weapon that fires particle beams into the atmosphere or space
  • particulate scrubber — A particulate scrubber is a scrubber in which a liquid is mixed with the gas to collect solids.
  • peasecod breastplate — a breastplate having a long central ridge terminating in a raised area overhanging the waistline.
  • physical double star — two stars that appear as one if not viewed through a telescope with adequate magnification, such as two stars that are separated by a great distance but are nearly in line with each other and an observer (optical double star) or those that are relatively close together and comprise a single physical system (physical double star)
  • pipeline burst cache — (hardware, storage)   (PB Cache) A synchronous cache built from pipelined SRAM. A cache in which reading or writing a new location takes multiple cycles but subsequent locations can be accessed in a single cycle. On Pentium systems in 1996, pipeline burst caches are frequently used as secondary caches. The first 8 bytes of data are transferred in 3 CPU cycles, and the next 3 8-byte pieces of data are transferred in one cycle each.
  • play catch-up (ball) — to try to equal or surpass one's opponent in competition, as a ballgame, in which one is behind
  • potassium bichromate — an orange-red, crystalline, water-soluble, poisonous powder, K 2 Cr 2 O 7 , used chiefly in dyeing, photography, and as a laboratory reagent.
  • proactive inhibition — the tendency for earlier memories to interfere with the retrieval of material learned later
  • probability function — the function the values of which are probabilities of the distinct outcomes of a discrete random variable
  • prohibited substance — a substance, such as a drug, etc, that is banned or forbidden by law or other authority
  • public administrator — an official of a city, county, or state government.
  • quantum bogodynamics — /kwon'tm boh"goh-di:-nam"iks/ A theory that characterises the universe in terms of bogon sources (such as politicians, used-car salesmen, TV evangelists, and suits in general), bogon sinks (such as taxpayers and computers), and bogosity potential fields. Bogon absorption causes human beings to behave mindlessly and machines to fail (and may also cause both to emit secondary bogons); however, the precise mechanics of bogon-computron interaction are not yet understood. Quantum bogodynamics is most often invoked to explain the sharp increase in hardware and software failures in the presence of suits; the latter emit bogons, which the former absorb.
  • quasi-stellar object — quasar. Abbreviation: QSO.
  • receivables turnover — A receivables turnover is a measure of cash flow that is calculated by dividing net credit sales by average accounts receivable.
  • reductio ad absurdum — a reduction to an absurdity; the refutation of a proposition by demonstrating the inevitably absurd conclusion to which it would logically lead.
  • rocky mountain basic — (language)   The BASIC language used by Hewlett Packard on their 680x0-based computers. Rocky Mountain Basic is good for interfaces to IEEE 488 controls and contains many mathematical and matrix functions. It has about 600 commands. Typical applications include automatic test stations.
  • saint john ambulance — an organization that provides first aid and first-aid training
  • semiautobiographical — pertaining to or being a fictionalized account of an author's own life.
  • short back and sides — If a man has a short back and sides, his hair is cut very short at the back and sides with slightly thicker, longer hair on the top of the head.
  • special boat service — a unit of the Royal Marines specializing in reconnaissance and sabotage
  • spectroscopic binary — a binary star having components that are not sufficiently separated to be resolved by a telescope, known to be a binary only bythe variations in wavelength of emitted light that are detected by a spectroscope.
  • spherical aberration — variation in focal length of a lens or mirror from center to edge, due to its spherical shape.
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