21-letter words containing b, i, r, l
- distributed smalltalk — ["The Design and Implementation of Distributed Smalltalk", J. Bennett, SIGPLAN Notices 22(12):318-330 (Dec 1980)].
- double predestination — the doctrine that God has foreordained both those who will be saved and those who will be damned.
- double spanish burton — a tackle having one standing block and two running blocks, giving a mechanical advantage of five, neglecting friction.
- electronic publishing — Electronic publishing is the publishing of documents in a form that can be read on a computer, for example as a CD-ROM.
- empire state building — New York City skyscraper
- empirical probability — a measure or estimate of the degree of confidence one may have in the occurrence of an event, defined as the proportion observed in a sample
- employee contribution — money contributed by an employee to his or her employer's pension fund
- employer contribution — money contributed by an employer to his or her employee's pension fund
- epidermolysis bullosa — type of genetic skin disorder
- equiangular hyperbola — a hyperbola with transverse and conjugate axes equal to each other.
- extensible vax editor — (text, tool) (EVE) A DEC product implemented using DEC's Text Processing Utility (TPU).
- faculty board meeting — a meeting of the governing body of a faculty
- five civilized tribes — the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles of the Indian Territory
- flip someone the bird — give someone the finger (see phrase under finger)
- forward compatibility — (jargon) The ability to accept input from later versions of itself. Forward compatibility is harder to achieve than backward compatibility, since, in the backward case, the input format is know whereas a forward compatible system needs to cope gracefully with unknown future features. An example of future compatibility is the stipulation that a web browser should ignore HTML tags it does not recognise. See also extensible.
- franco-belgian system — French system.
- garbageabetical order — (humour) 1. The result of using an insertion sort to merge data into an unsorted list. 2. The state of any file or list that is supposed to be sorted, but is not.
- generic type variable — (programming) (Also known as a "schematic type variable"). Different occurrences of a generic type variable in a type expression may be instantiated to different types. Thus, in the expression let id x = x in (id True, id 1) id's type is (for all a: a -> a). The universal quantifier "for all a:" means that a is a generic type variable. For the two uses of id, a is instantiated to Bool and Int. Compare this with let id x = x in let f g = (g True, g 1) in f id This looks similar but f has no legal Hindley-Milner type. If we say f :: (a -> b) -> (b, b) this would permit g's type to be any instance of (a -> b) rather than requiring it to be at least as general as (a -> b). Furthermore, it constrains both instances of g to have the same result type whereas they do not. The type variables a and b in the above are implicitly quantified at the top level: f :: for all a: for all b: (a -> b) -> (b, b) so instantiating them (removing the quantifiers) can only be done once, at the top level. To correctly describe the type of f requires that they be locally quantified: f :: ((for all a: a) -> (for all b: b)) -> (c, d) which means that each time g is applied, a and b may be instantiated differently. f's actual argument must have a type at least as general as ((for all a: a) -> (for all b: b)), and may not be some less general instance of this type. Type variables c and d are still implicitly quantified at the top level and, now that g's result type is a generic type variable, any types chosen for c and d are guaranteed to be instances of it. This type for f does not express the fact that b only needs to be at least as general as the types c and d. For example, if c and d were both Bool then any function of type (for all a: a -> Bool) would be a suitable argument to f but it would not match the above type for f.
- give sb a green light — If someone in authority gives you a green light, they give you permission to do something.
- gold bullion standard — a gold standard in which gold is not coined but may be purchased at a fixed price for foreign exchange.
- hierarchical database — (database) A kind of database management system that links records together like a family tree such that each record type has only one owner, e.g. an order is owned by only one customer. Hierarchical structures were widely used in the first mainframe database management systems. However, due to their restrictions, they often cannot be used to relate structures that exist in the real world.
- hildegard (of bingen) — Saint(1098-1179); Ger. nun, composer, & mystic: her day is Sept. 17
- hindu-arabic numerals — Arabic numeral.
- horizontal stabilizer — the horizontal surface, usually fixed, of an aircraft empennage, to which the elevator is hinged.
- horizontal tabulation — (character) (tab, Control-I, HT, ASCII 9) A character which when displayed or printed causes the following character to be placed at the next "tabstop" - the column whose number is a multiple of the current tab width. Commonly (especially in Unix(?)) the tab width is eight, so, counting from the left margin (column zero), the tab stops are at columns 8, 16, 24, up to the width of the screen or page. A tab width of four or two is often preferred when indenting program source code to conserve indentation. Represented as "\t" in C, Unix, and derivatives.
- hyperbolic paraboloid — a paraboloid that can be put into a position such that its sections parallel to one coordinate plane are hyperbolas, with its sections parallel to the other two coordinate planes being parabolas.
- illinois bundleflower — a warm-season perennial, Desmanthus illinoensis, having small brown legumes and fernlike leaves, native to North American prairies, glades, and pastures.
- imprecise probability — (probability) A probability that is represented as an interval (as opposed to a single number) included in [0,1].
- international brigade — a military force that fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, consisting of volunteers (predominantly socialists and communists) from many countries
- intersubstitutability — a person or thing acting or serving in place of another.
- irish republican army — an underground Irish nationalist organization founded to work for Irish independence from Great Britain: declared illegal by the Irish government in 1936, but continues activity aimed at the unification of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Abbreviation: IRA, I.R.A.
- keep the ball rolling — a spherical or approximately spherical body or shape; sphere: He rolled the piece of paper into a ball.
- laboratory technician — sb who assists in a laboratory
- lady murasaki shikibu — Lady, 978?–1031? Japanese poet and novelist.
- lambeth quadrilateral — the four essentials agreed upon at the Lambeth Conference of 1888 for a United Christian Church, namely, the Holy Scriptures, the Apostles' Creed, the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion, and the historic episcopate
- language-based editor — language-sensitive editor
- leave sb in the lurch — If someone leaves you in the lurch, they go away or stop helping you at a very difficult time.
- liability engineering — the practice by a company of taking steps to avoid liability for any fraudulent dealings with it, such as making a credit-card owner responsible for any abuses of the card by a third party
- like a blue-arsed fly — in a state of frenzied activity
- long-term liabilities — Long-term liabilities are debts that a company does not have to pay back for a year or more.
- magnetic permeability — permeability (def 2).
- magnificent riflebird — a bird of paradise, Craspedophora magnifica
- maître d'hôtel butter — melted butter mixed with parsley and lemon juice
- maple-leaved viburnum — dockmackie.
- marketable securities — Marketable securities are securities that can easily be sold quickly on the open market.
- methyltrinitrobenzene — TNT.
- national public radio — a nationwide network of nonprofit radio stations supported in part by U.S. government funds distributed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, often affiliated with a public television station or educational institution. Abbreviation: NPR.
- negotiable instrument — order or promise to pay money
- negotiable securities — securities that are legally transferable in title from one party to another
- nellis air force base — the largest air base in the U.S. Air Force's Tactical Air Command, located near Las Vegas, Nev., and developed from what began in 1941 as a U.S. Army Air Corps field.