0%

19-letter words containing b, o, s, d

  • detective constable — a police officer who investigates crime and who is of the lowest rank
  • developable surface — a surface that can be flattened onto a plane without stretching or compressing any part of it, as a circular cone.
  • devils-on-horseback — a savoury of prunes wrapped in bacon slices and served on toast
  • diethylstilbesterol — Misspelling of diethylstilbestrol\u200e.
  • diethylstilboestrol — Diethylstilbestrol.
  • disambiguation page — a page on a website that lists various websites or web pages that have or could have the same title. The user is able to select from the list that page, site etc that he or she actually wants
  • distribution system — The distribution system is the part of an electric system after the transmission system that is dedicated to delivering electric energy to an end user.
  • do not disturb sign — A do not disturb sign is a sign that a guest in a hotel hangs outside their room to tell other people not to knock the door or enter.
  • do one's level best — If you say that you will do your level best to do something, you are emphasizing that you will try as hard as you can to do it, even if the situation makes it very difficult.
  • dobsonian telescope — a relatively inexpensive Newtonian telescope, suitable for visual but not photographic use, in which the tube assembly slips freely in the lower base.
  • double yellow lines — parallel yellow lines painted down the centre of a roadway to indicate that overtaking is not permitted in either direction
  • double-density disk — a disk with more than the normal capacity for storage
  • dry-bulk cargo ship — a ship that carries an unpackaged dry cargo such as coal or grain; bulk carrier
  • east dunbartonshire — a council area of central Scotland to the N of Glasgow: part of Strathclyde region from 1975 until 1996: mainly agricultural and residential. Administrative centre: Kirkintilloch. Pop: 106 970 (2003 est). Area: 172 sq km (66 sq miles)
  • ebola virus disease — Also called Ebola fever, Ebola hemorrhagic fever, Ebola virus disease. a usually fatal disease, a type of hemorrhagic fever, caused by the Ebola virus and marked by high fever, severe gastrointestinal distress, and bleeding.
  • error-based testing — (programming)   Testing where information about programming style, error-prone language constructs, and other programming knowledge is applied to select test data capable of detecting faults, either a specified class of faults or all possible faults.
  • financial ombudsman — any of five British ombudsmen: the Banking Ombudsman, set up in 1986 to investigate complaints from bank customers; the Building Society Ombudsman, set up in 1987 to investigate complaints from building society customers; the Insurance Ombudsman, set up in 1981 to investigate complaints by policyholders (since 1988 this ombudsman has also operated a Unit Trust Ombudsman scheme); the Investment Ombudsman set up in 1989 to investigate complaints by investors (the Personal Investment Authority Ombudsman is responsible for investigating complaints by personal investors); and the Pensions Ombudsman, set up in 1993 to investigate complaints regarding pension schemes
  • first world problem — a fairly minor problem, frustrating situation, or complaint associated with a relatively high standard of living, as opposed to the more serious problems associated with poverty: I’m bored with all my electronic gadgets—such a first world problem!
  • foundation subjects — the subjects studied as part of the National Curriculum, including the compulsory core subjects
  • functional database — (database, language)   A database which uses a functional language as its query language. Databases would seem to be an inappropriate application for functional languages since, a purely functional language would have to return a new copy of the entire database every time (part of) it was updated. To be practically scalable, the update mechanism must clearly be destructive rather than functional; however it is quite feasible for the query language to be purely functional so long as the database is considered as an argument. One approach to the update problem would use a monad to encapsulate database access and ensure it was single threaded. Alternative approaches have been suggested by Trinder, who suggests non-destructive updating with shared data structures, and Sutton who uses a variant of a Phil Wadler's linear type system. There are two main classes of functional database languages. The first is based upon Backus' FP language, of which FQL is probably the best known example. Adaplan is a more recent language which falls into this category. More recently, people have been working on languages which are syntactically very similar to modern functional programming languages, but which also provide all of the features of a database language, e.g. bulk data structures which can be incrementally updated, type systems which can be incrementally updated, and all data persisting in a database. Examples are PFL [Poulovassilis&Small, VLDB-91], and Machiavelli [Ohori et al, ACM SIGMOD Conference, 1998].
  • gigabits per second — (unit)   (Gbps) A unit of information transfer rate equal to one billion bits per second. Note that, while a gigabit is defined as a power of two (2^30 bits), a gigabit per second is defined as a power of ten (10^9 bits per second, which is slightly less) than 2^30).
  • go down the tube(s) — If a business, economy, or institution goes down the tubes or goes down the tube, it fails or collapses completely.
  • goodwill ambassador — an ambassador who shows goodwill to another country, organization, etc, on behalf of his or her own country, organization, etc
  • handlebar moustache — a man's moustache having long, curved ends that resemble the handlebars of a bicycle.
  • have one's blood up — to be or cause to be angry or inflamed
  • high blood pressure — elevation of the arterial blood pressure or a condition resulting from it; hypertension. Abbreviation: HBP.
  • honorable discharge — a discharge from military service of a person who has fulfilled obligations efficiently, honorably, and faithfully.
  • hydrostatic balance — a balance for finding the weight of an object submerged in water in order to determine the upthrust on it and thus determine its relative density
  • it would be wise to — If someone says to you that it would be wise to do something, they are advising you to do it, because it is the most sensible and reasonable action or decision in a particular situation.
  • keyboard instrument — any musical instrument that is played using a keyboard
  • kilobits per second — (unit)   (kbps, kb/s) A unit of data rate where 1 kb/s = 1000 bits per second. This contrasts with units of storage where 1 Kb = 1024 bits (note upper case K).
  • knock someone bandy — to amaze or astound
  • lean over backwards — to make a special effort, esp in order to please
  • lobby correspondent — a political correspondent who reports from parliament
  • look sb up and down — If someone looks you up and down, they direct their eyes from your head to your feet, in a rude and superior way and often as though they disapprove of you.
  • louis ii de bourbon — Condé, Prince de.
  • megabits per second — (unit)   (Mbps, Mb/s) Millions of bits per second. A unit of data rate. 1 Mb/s = 1,000,000 bits per second (not 1,048,576). E.g. Ethernet can carry 10 Mbps.
  • non-distinguishable — to mark off as different (often followed by from or by): He was distinguished from the other boys by his height.
  • normal distribution — a theoretical frequency distribution represented by a normal curve.
  • object-oriented sql — (language)   (OSQL) A functional language, a superset of SQL, used in Hewlett-Packard's OpenODB database system.
  • objectfuscated code — (humour, programming)   Object-oriented code which has been abstracted to so many levels that no-one can understand it anymore. A play on obfuscated code.
  • olive-backed thrush — Swainson's thrush.
  • optical 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)
  • over sb's dead body — You can say over my dead body to emphasize that you feel very strongly that something should not happen, and that you will do everything you can to prevent it.
  • own flesh and blood — If you say that someone is your own flesh and blood, you are emphasizing that they are a member of your family.
  • pied-de-biche spoon — a spoon having a handle with a trifid end.
  • profitability study — a study of how much profit a company, organization, etc, makes or how profitable it is
  • pseudo-biographical — of or relating to a person's life: He's gathering biographical data for his book on Milton.
  • pseudorandom number — (programming)   One of a sequence of numbers generated by some algorithm so as to have an even distribution over some range of values and minimal correlation between successive values. Pseudorandom numbers are used in simulation and encryption. They are pseudorandom not random because the sequence eventually repeats exactly and is entirely determined by the initial conditions. One of the simplest algorithms is x[i+1] = (a * x[i] + c) mod m but this repeats after at most m numbers and successive numbers are closely related. Better algorithms generally use more previous numbers to calculate the next number.
  • relational database — an electronic database comprising multiple files of related information, usually stored in tables of rows (records) and columns (fields), and allowing a link to be established between separate files that have a matching field, as a column of invoice numbers, so that the two files can be queried simultaneously by the user.
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?