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

  • d'alembert's principle — the principle that for a moving body the external forces are in equilibrium with the inertial forces; a generalization of Newton's third law of motion
  • database administrator — (job)   A person responsible for the design and management of one or more databases and for the evaluation, selection and implementation of database management systems. In smaller organisations, the data administrator and database administrator are often one in the same; however, when they are different, the database administrator's function is more technical. The database administrator would implement the database software that meets the requirements outlined by the organisation's data administrator and systems analysts. Tasks might include controling an organisation's data resources, using data dictionary software to ensure data integrity and security, recovering corrupted data and eliminating data redundancy and uses tuning tools to improve database performance.
  • database normalisation — (database)   A series of steps followed to obtain a database design that allows for efficient access and storage of data in a relational database. These steps reduce data redundancy and the chances of data becoming inconsistent. A table in a relational database is said to be in normal form if it satisfies certain constraints. Codd's original work defined three such forms but there are now five generally accepted steps of normalisation. The output of the first step is called First Normal Form (1NF), the output of the second step is Second Normal Form (2NF), etc. First Normal Form eliminates repeating groups by putting each value of a multi-valued attribute into a new row. Second Normal Form eliminates functional dependencies on a partial key by putting the fields in a separate table from those that are dependent on the whole key. Third Normal Form eliminates functional dependencies on non-key fields by putting them in a separate table. At this stage, all non-key fields are dependent on the key, the whole key and nothing but the key. Fourth Normal Form separates independent multi-valued facts stored in one table into separate tables. Fifth Normal Form breaks out data redundancy that is not covered by any of the previous normal forms.
  • dishonorable discharge — the discharge of a person from military service for an offense more serious than one for which a bad-conduct discharge is given.
  • 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.
  • do a number on someone — to manipulate or trick someone
  • 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.
  • earn one's daily bread — to earn one's living
  • end transmission block — (character)   (ETB) The mnemonic for ASCII character 23.
  • 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.
  • general public license — (legal)   (GPL, note US spelling) The licence applied to most software from the Free Software Foundation and the GNU project and other authors who choose to use it. The licences for most software are designed to prevent users from sharing or changing it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee the freedom to share and change free software - to make sure the software is free for all its users. The GPL is designed to make sure that anyone can distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if they wish); that they receive source code or can get it if they want; that they can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that they know they can do these things. The GPL forbids anyone to deny others these rights or to ask them to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for those who distribute copies of the software or modify it. See also General Public Virus.
  • get off someone's back — to stop criticizing or pestering someone
  • great australian bight — a wide bay in S Australia.
  • 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.
  • hermann-mauguin symbol — a notation for indicating a particular point group.
  • house of bernarda alba — a drama (1941) by Federico García Lorca.
  • in all one's born days — so far in one's life
  • in one's birthday suit — naked; nude
  • in one's own back yard — close at hand
  • in someone's bad books — regarded by someone with disfavour
  • 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
  • japanese umbrella pine — a single aberrant species of pine, Sciadopitys verticillata, in which the leaves are fused in pairs and the crown is spire-shaped
  • 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 allowances for sb — If you make allowances for someone, you accept behaviour which you would not normally accept or deal with them less severely than you would normally, because of a problem that they have.
  • make contact (with sb) — If you make contact with someone, you find out where they are and talk or write to them.
  • make one's marble good — to succeed or do the right thing
  • 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.
  • missing persons bureau — the part of the Police Force dealing with tracing missing people
  • mozilla public license — Open source license
  • 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.
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