21-letter words containing b, o, l, e, a
- developmental biology — the study of the development of multicellular organisms, including the study of the earliest stages of embryonic structure and tissue differentiation
- 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.
- 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
- epidermolysis bullosa — type of genetic skin disorder
- equiangular hyperbola — a hyperbola with transverse and conjugate axes equal to each other.
- european central bank — the central bank of the European Union, established in 1998 to oversee the process of European Monetary Union and subsequently to direct monetary policy within the countries using the euro
- 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
- federal reserve board — a U.S. federal banking system that is under the control of a central board of governors (Federal Reserve Board) with a central bank (Federal Reserve Bank) in each of 12 districts and that has wide powers in controlling credit and the flow of money as well as in performing other functions, as regulating and supervising its member banks.
- file allocation table — (file system) (FAT) The component of an MS-DOS or Windows 95 file system which describes the files, directories, and free space on a hard disk or floppy disk. A disk is divided into partitions. Under the FAT file system each partition is divided into clusters, each of which can be one or more sectors, depending on the size of the partition. Each cluster is either allocated to a file or directory or it is free (unused). A directory lists the name, size, modification time and starting cluster of each file or subdirectory it contains. At the start of the partition is a table (the FAT) with one entry for each cluster. Each entry gives the number of the next cluster in the same file or a special value for "not allocated" or a special value for "this is the last cluster in the chain". The first few clusters after the FAT contain the root directory. The FAT file system was originally created for the CP/M[?] operating system where files were catalogued using 8-bit addressing. MS DOS's FAT allows only 8.3 filenames. With the introduction of MS-DOS 4 an incompatible 16-bit FAT (FAT16) with 32-kilobyte clusters was introduced that allowed partitions of up to 2 gigabytes. Microsoft later created FAT32 to support partitions larger than two gigabytes and pathnames greater that 256 characters. It also allows more efficient use of disk space since clusters are four kilobytes rather than 32 kilobytes. FAT32 was first available in OEM Service Release 2 of Windows 95 in 1996. It is not fully backward compatible with the 16-bit and 8-bit FATs. Compare: NTFS.
- 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.
- gas blanketed storage — Gas blanketed storage is the use of gas to fill empty space in a storage tank.
- george bryan brummell — George Bryan II, Beau Brummell.
- goldbach's conjecture — the conjecture that every even number greater than two is the sum of two prime numbers
- hildegard (of bingen) — Saint(1098-1179); Ger. nun, composer, & mystic: her day is Sept. 17
- horizontal stabilizer — the horizontal surface, usually fixed, of an aircraft empennage, to which the elevator is hinged.
- hubble classification — a method of classifying galaxies depending on whether they are elliptical, spiral, barred spiral, or irregular
- 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.
- hypogammaglobulinemia — A type of immune disorder characterised by a reduction in all types of gamma globulins.
- 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
- jobseeker's allowance — (in Britain) a National Insurance or social security payment for unemployed people; replaced unemployment benefit in 1996
- joseph bonaparte gulf — an inlet of the Timor Sea in N Australia. Width: 360 km (225 miles)
- 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
- language-based editor — language-sensitive editor
- lap and diagonal belt — A lap and diagonal belt is a strap attached to a seat in a vehicle that extends horizontally in front of the hips and diagonally from the outer shoulder across the chest. You fasten it across your body in order to prevent yourself being thrown out of the seat if there is a sudden movement or stop.
- lap and shoulder belt — a car seat belt
- league of arab states — Arab League.
- leave holding the bag — a container or receptacle of leather, plastic, cloth, paper, etc., capable of being closed at the mouth; pouch.
- long-term liabilities — Long-term liabilities are debts that a company does not have to pay back for a year or more.
- luck was on sb's side — If you say that luck was on someone's side, you mean that they succeeded in something by chance as well as by their own efforts or ability.
- maître d'hôtel butter — melted butter mixed with parsley and lemon juice
- make one's blood boil — the fluid that circulates in the principal vascular system of human beings and other vertebrates, in humans consisting of plasma in which the red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets are suspended.
- megaloblastic anaemia — any anaemia, esp pernicious anaemia, characterized by the presence of megaloblasts in the blood or bone marrow
- 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.
- nine-banded armadillo — an armadillo, Dasypus novemcinctus, of the southern U.S. to Argentina, having nine hinged bands of bony plates, the female of which usually gives birth to quadruplets that are always of the same sex.
- northumberland strait — the part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence that separates Prince Edward Island from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, in SE Canada. About 200 miles (320 km) long; 9–30 miles (15–48 km) wide.
- not hold one's breath — If you say that you won't hold your breath, you mean that you do not expect something to happen even though someone has suggested that it might.
- objective correlative — a completely depicted situation or chain of events that objectifies a particular emotion in such a way as to produce or evoke that emotion in the reader.
- oblique circular cone — a cone whose surface is generated by lines joining a fixed point to the points of a circle, the fixed point lying on a line that is not perpendicular to the circle at its center.
- observation satellite — an unmanned satellite that observes the earth and gathers data
- open graphics library — (graphics, library) (OpenGL) A multi-platform software interface to graphics hardware, supporting rendering and imaging operations. The OpenGL interface was developed by Silicon Graphics, who license it to other vendors. The OpenGL graphics interface consists of several hundred functions operating on 2D and 3D objects, supporting basic techniques, such as modelling and smooth shading, and advanced techniques, such as texture mapping and motion blur. Many operations require a frame buffer. OpenGL is network-transparent, and a common extension to the X Window System allows an OpenGL client to communicate across a network with a different vendor's OpenGL server. OpenGL is based on Silicon Graphics' proprietary IRIS GL.
- optical double (star) — double star (sense 2)
- portable commodore 64 — (computer) A version of the Commodore 64 modelled after the original Osborne portable PCs, with a flip-down keyboard that revealed a 5-inch colour monitor, and a built-in 1541 floppy disk drive. It is thought that few were made but that they did go on sale, at least in Canada.
- portable common loops — (PCL) A language which started out as an implementation of CommonLoops and turned into a portable CLOS implementation. Version 1992-08-28. It runs under Lucid Common LISP 4.0.1 and CMU Common LISP 16e.