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22-letter words containing i, b, a

  • black-capped chickadee — any of several North American birds of the genus Parus, of the titmouse family, especially P. atricapillus (black-capped chickadee) having the throat and top of the head black.
  • black-scholes equation — a partial differential equation used to estimate the changing value of an option over time
  • bleeding-heart liberal — a person of left-wing or liberal views who is deemed to be excessively soft-hearted
  • block diagram compiler — (simulation, language)   (BDL) A block diagram simulation tool, with associated language.
  • blue-winged kookaburra — a related smaller bird D. Leachii, of tropical Australia and New Guinea
  • board of commissioners — the administrative body of a county in many U.S. states, especially in the South and the West, having from two to seven elected members.
  • book of original entry — a book in which transactions are recorded before being transferred into a ledger.
  • borderline personality — Psychiatry. a personality disorder characterized by instability in many areas, as mood, identity, self-image, and behavior, and often manifested by impulsive actions, suicide attempts, inappropriate anger, or depression.
  • 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
  • brachiocephalic artery — a major artery, arising from the arch of the aorta, that supplies blood to the right arm and the head.
  • break (or keep) faith — to be disloyal (or loyal) to one's beliefs, principles, etc.
  • bridge of san luis rey — a novel (1927) by Thornton Wilder.
  • bring down the curtain — If something brings down the curtain on an event or situation, it causes or marks the end of it.
  • 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)
  • bug-for-bug compatible — Same as bug-compatible, with the additional implication that much tedious effort went into ensuring that each (known) bug was replicated.
  • 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
  • chicago board of trade — a major exchange in the United States that deals in futures, notably of grains and metals. Abbreviation: CBT.
  • chromosomal aberration — any irregularity or abnormality of chromosome distribution, number, structure, or arrangement.
  • colliding-beam machine — a particle accelerator in which positively and negatively charged particles circulate in opposite directions and collide head-on.
  • 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
  • combinatorial topology — the branch of topology that deals with the properties of geometric figures by considering the figures as being composed of elementary geometric figures, as points or lines.
  • consummatory behaviour — any behaviour that leads directly to the satisfaction of an innate drive, e.g. eating or drinking
  • contingent beneficiary — a person who becomes the beneficiary if the primary beneficiary dies or is otherwise disqualified.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • de broglie wave length — the postulate of wave mechanics that a particle of mass m moving at a velocity v will have the properties of a wave of wavelength h / mv (de Broglie wavelength) where h is Planck's constant.
  • debt collection agency — a company that collects debts on behalf of creditors
  • diethylbarbituric acid — barbital
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • double blackwall hitch — a kind of knot
  • 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.
  • federal maritime board — the body responsible for regulating commerce by US and international shipping in US waters
  • 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
  • fixed point combinator — (mathematics)   (Y) The name used in combinatory logic for the fixed point function, also written as "fix".
  • flexible-rate mortgage — adjustable-rate mortgage.
  • fort benjamin harrison — a military reservation and U.S. Army training center in central Indiana, NE of Indianapolis.
  • forth modification lab — (event)   (FORML) A Forth conference held every November on the West coast of the USA ().
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