23-letter words containing e, b, o, a, t
- fall between two stools — If someone has fallen between two stools, they are unable to decide which of two courses of action to take and as a result they have not done either of them successfully.
- fish in troubled waters — any of various cold-blooded, aquatic vertebrates, having gills, commonly fins, and typically an elongated body covered with scales.
- garbage in, garbage out — (humour) (GIGO) /gi:'goh/ Wilf Hey's maxim expressing the fact that computers, unlike humans, will unquestioningly process nonsensical input data and produce nonsensical output. Of course a properly written program will reject input data that is obviously erroneous but such checking is not always easy to specify and is tedious to write. GIGO is usually said in response to lusers who complain that a program didn't "do the right thing" when given imperfect input or otherwise mistreated in some way. Also commonly used to describe failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or imprecise data. The expansion "Garbage In, Gospel Out" is an ironic comment on the tendency to put excessive trust in "computerised" data.
- general-obligation bond — a bond issued by a state or city and backed by general tax revenue and the issuer's credit.
- get down to brass tacks — discuss essentials
- give (or get) a tumble — to give (or get) some favorable or affectionate notice, attention, etc.
- give something a rub-up — to smooth or polish something
- hollerithabetical order — (algorithm) Sorted into the order a standard Hollerith card sorting machine produces, with special characters interleaved within the alphabet.
- horsehair-blight fungus — a fungal parasite, Marasmius equicrinis, that causes a disease of certain tropical plants, especially tea.
- hortense de beauharnais — Beauharnais, Eugénie Hortense de.
- hunchback of notre dame — French Notre Dame de Paris. a novel (1831) by Victor Hugo.
- hypobetalipoproteinemia — (pathology) A low level of betalipoprotein (low-density lipoprotein) in the bloodstream.
- identification bracelet — a bracelet, usually of metal links, having an identification plate for the name of the wearer.
- incontestability clause — a clause in a life-insurance or health-insurance policy stating that the insurer cannot contest the policy after a stated period of time.
- initial public offering — An initial public offering is the first offering of stock when a company goes public.
- irish christian brother — Brother of the Christian Schools (def 2).
- juvenile-onset diabetes — diabetes (def 3).
- largemouth (black) bass — a black bass (Micropterus salmoides) found in warm, sluggish waters
- lesser peach tree borer — the larva of a clearwing moth, Synanthedon pictipes, distributed throughout the eastern U.S. and Canada but most prevalent in the South, that burrows into the injured trunks and branches of stone fruit trees.
- lock, stock, and barrel — a device for securing a door, gate, lid, drawer, or the like in position when closed, consisting of a bolt or system of bolts propelled and withdrawn by a mechanism operated by a key, dial, etc.
- lymphoblastic leukaemia — a severe blood disorder in which abnormal leukocytes are identified as immature forms of lymphocytes
- main distribution frame — (networking) (MDF) The network closet containing the main hub.
- martha washington table — a sewing table of the 18th century having an oval top that can be lifted and a central compartment of drawers with semicircular bins at each end.
- maturity-onset diabetes — diabetes (def 4).
- negative bending moment — a bending moment that produces convex bending at the supports of a continuously supported beam
- nonverbal communication — gesture and facial expression
- north ossetian republic — a constituent republic of S Russia, on the N slopes of the central Caucasus Mountains. Capital: Vladikavkaz. Pop: 709 900 (2002). Area: about 8000 sq km (3088 sq miles)
- not dry behind the ears — free from moisture or excess moisture; not moist; not wet: a dry towel; dry air.
- object management group — (body) (OMG) A consortium aimed at setting standards in object-oriented programming. In 1989, this consortium, which included IBM Corporation, Apple Computer Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc., mobilised to create a cross-compatible distributed object standard. The goal was a common binary object with methods and data that work using all types of development environments on all types of platforms. Using a committee of organisations, OMG set out to create the first Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) standard which appeared in 1991. As of February 1998, the latest standard is CORBA 2.2.
- object relations theory — a form of psychoanalytic theory postulating that people relate to others in order to develop themselves
- object-oriented fortran — (language) (OOF) An object-oriented extension of Fortran, in which data items can be grouped into objects, which can be instantiated and executed in parallel. It was available for Sun, Iris, iPSC, and nCUBE, but is no longer supported. E-mail: Donna Reese <[email protected]>.
- off the back of a lorry — If someone says that something has fallen off the back of a lorry, or that they got something off the back of a lorry, they mean that they bought something that they knew was stolen.
- on one's best behaviour — behaving with careful good manners
- out of a clear blue sky — the region of the clouds or the upper air; the upper atmosphere of the earth: airplanes in the sky; cloudy skies.
- participant observation — a technique of field research, used in anthropology and sociology, by which an investigator (participant observer) studies the life of a group by sharing in its activities.
- past one's sell-by date — If you say that someone or something is past their sell-by date, you mean they are no longer effective, interesting, or useful.
- pat someone on the back — to congratulate or encourage someone
- pentachloronitrobenzene — a crystalline compound, C 6 Cl 5 NO 2 , used as an herbicide and insecticide. Abbreviation: PCNB.
- percentage distribution — a frequency distribution is which individual frequencies are shown as a percentage of the total frequencies
- play by electronic mail — (games) A kind of game where the players use electronic mail to communicate. This may be done via a human moderator or an automatic mailing list exploder on some central machine or it may be fully distributed with each player just addressing his mail to all other players. This is a natural extension of "play by mail" games conducted via snail mail.
- polybrominated biphenyl — PBB.
- portable object adapter — (architecture) (POA) Part of the CORBA architecture.
- portable tool interface — (programming, standard) (PTI) A standard such as PCTE, allowing interworking between different software tools via defined interfaces to the user and to the repository or object management system.
- public-key cryptography — public-key encryption
- publicly-quoted company — a company whose shares are traded on a stock exchange
- random number generator — a piece of computer software used to create a sequence of random numbers
- rate-of-climb indicator — a flight instrument that indicates the rate of climb or descent of an aircraft.
- relative sunspot number — a number indicating the degree of sunspot activity on the sun as a factor of observer idiosyncrasies, the number of sunspot groups, and the number of individual sunspots.
- respectability politics — the set of beliefs holding that conformity to socially acceptable or mainstream standards of appearance and behavior will protect a member of a marginalized or minority group from prejudices and systemic injustices: Black respectability politics perpetuate the fiction of a meritocracy in public education.
- retrolental fibroplasia — an unusual eye disease occurring in premature infants, usually from being given high concentrations of oxygen, which causes abnormal formation of fibrous tissue behind the lens and often results in blindness.