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22-letter words containing b, s

  • bosnia and herzegovina — country in SE Europe: it came under Turkish rule in the 15th cent. and under Austro-Hungarian control in 1878: it was part of Yugoslavia (1918-91): 19,741 sq mi (51,129 sq km); pop. 4,366,000; cap. Sarajevo
  • bridge of san luis rey — a novel (1927) by Thornton Wilder.
  • bristle-thighed curlew — an Alaskan curlew, Numenius tahitiensis, that winters in Polynesia, having bristlelike feathers on its thighs.
  • british library method — (algorithm)   Brute force searching. According to legends circulating in the 1970s, in the British Library books are searched for by examining each book sequentially in the first shelf, then the next shelf, continuing until the book is found or the entire library has been searched. The term was referred to in a Dutch coursebook, "Inleiding In De Informatica" (Introduction to Informatics) from a course given by C.H.A. Koster and Th.A. Zoethout. This was based on a course given at the TU Berlin.
  • british national party — a far-right political party
  • british virgin islands — a UK Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, consisting of 36 islands in the E Virgin Islands: formerly part of the Federation of the Leeward Islands (1871–1956). Capital: Road Town, on Tortola. Pop: 31 912 (2013 est). Area: 153 sq km (59 sq miles)
  • brush-footed butterfly — any of several butterflies of the family Nymphalidae, including the fritillaries, mourning cloaks, anglewings, and commas, characterized by reduced, nonfunctional forelegs.
  • business reply service — a service involving reply-paid envelopes
  • by all manner of means — certainly; of course
  • by any manner of means — in any way; at all
  • carboxymethylcellulose — a white, water-soluble polymer derived from cellulose, used as a coating and sizing for paper and textiles, a stabilizer for various foods, and an appetite suppressor.
  • catch/take sb unawares — If something catches you unawares or takes you unawares, it happens when you are not expecting it.
  • charity begins at home — If you say charity begins at home, you mean that people should deal with the needs of people close to them before they think about helping others.
  • chebyshev's inequality — the fundamental theorem that the probability that a random variable differs from its mean by more than k standard deviations is less than or equal to 1/k2
  • chromosomal aberration — any irregularity or abnormality of chromosome distribution, number, structure, or arrangement.
  • combinatorial analysis — the branch of mathematics concerned with the theory of enumeration, or combinations and permutations, in order to solve problems about the possibility of constructing arrangements of objects which satisfy specified conditions
  • conscientious objector — A conscientious objector is a person who refuses to join the armed forces because they think that it is morally wrong to do so.
  • consummatory behaviour — any behaviour that leads directly to the satisfaction of an innate drive, e.g. eating or drinking
  • convertible loan stock — a stock or bond that can be converted into a stated number of shares at a particular date
  • crankshaft end bearing — The crankshaft end bearing is the bearing between the connecting rod and the crankshaft of an internal combustion engine.
  • curdle someone's blood — to fill someone with fear
  • 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.
  • disposable soma theory — the theory that ageing is caused by the body having increasingly fewer resources to allocate towards repairing wear and damage to tissues
  • 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.
  • distributed processing — a system consisting of a network of microcomputers performing certain functions and linked with a main computer used for more complex tasks
  • 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.
  • dread high bit disease — (character)   A condition endemic to PRIME (also known as "PR1ME") minicomputers that results in all the characters having their high bit (0x80, see meta bit) ON rather than OFF. This complicates transporting files to other systems and talking to true 8-bit devices. Folklore had it that PRIME adopted the convention in order to save 25 cents per serial line per machine; PRIME old-timers, on the other hand, claim they inherited the disease from Honeywell via customer NASA's compatibility requirements and struggled heroically to cure it. Whoever was responsible, this probably qualifies as one of the most cretinous design tradeoffs ever made. A few other machines have exhibited similar brain damage.
  • earn one's daily bread — to earn one's living
  • end transmission block — (character)   (ETB) The mnemonic for ASCII character 23.
  • fifth earl of rosebery — Archibald Philip Primrose [prim-rohz] /ˈprɪmˌroʊz/ (Show IPA), 5th Earl of, 1847–1929, British statesman and author: prime minister 1894–95.
  • 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.
  • frequency distribution — the correspondence of a set of frequencies with the set of categories, intervals, or values into which a population is classified.
  • 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.
  • geometric distribution — the distribution of the number, x, of independent trials required to obtain a first success: where the probability in each is p, the probability that x = r is p(1-p)r–1, where r = 1, 2, 3, …, with mean 1/p
  • get off someone's back — to stop criticizing or pestering someone
  • go for all the marbles — to take a great risk in the hope of a great gain
  • great australian bight — a wide bay in S Australia.
  • gum bichromate process — a contact printing method in which the image is formed on a coating of sensitized gum containing a suitable colored pigment and potassium or ammonium dichromate.
  • hamishah asar bishevat — Tu Bishevat.
  • happy valley-goose bay — a twin town in SE Labrador in Newfoundland, E Canada, consisting of an air base, Goose Bay, and its adjacent residential town of Happy Valley: used as a fuel stop by some transatlantic airplanes.
  • have a way with sth/sb — If you say that a person has a way with something or someone, you mean that that person seems to have a natural skill or instinct for dealing with them.
  • 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.
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