20-letter words containing i, b, n, a, l, r
- checkbook journalism — the practice of paying for a news story or an interview, or for exclusive broadcasting or publishing rights.
- clear air turbulence — turbulent air, not associated with a storm, that affects the flight of aircraft
- clear-air turbulence — atmospheric turbulence, sometimes severe, occurring in air devoid of clouds or other visible indicators that turbulence might be present. Abbreviation: CAT.
- disability insurance — insurance providing income to a policyholder who is disabled and cannot work.
- distribution channel — trade: retailer
- double fertilization — the fertilization process characteristic of flowering plants, in which one sperm cell of a pollen grain fertilizes an egg cell while a second fuses with two polar nuclei to produce a triploid body that gives rise to the endosperm.
- duck-billed dinosaur — hadrosaur.
- dynamic link library — Dynamically Linked Library
- electoral boundaries — the way that a country or area is divided for the purposes of voting in an election
- elizabeth of hungary — Saint. 1207–31, Hungarian princess who devoted herself to charity and asceticism. Feast day: Nov 17 and 19
- endorsement in blank — an endorsement on a bill of exchange, cheque, etc, naming no payee and thus making the endorsed sum payable to the bearer
- environment variable — (programming, operating system) A variable that is bound in the current environment. When evaluating an expression in some environment, the evaluation of a variable consists of looking up its name in the environment and substituting its value. Most programming languages have some concept of an environment but in Unix shell scripts it has a specific meaning slightly different from other contexts. In shell scripts, environment variables are one kind of shell variable. They differ from local variables and command line arguments in that they are inheritted by a child process. Examples are the PATH variable that tells the shell the file system paths to search to find command executables and the TZ variable which contains the local time zone. The variable called "SHELL" specifies the type of shell being used. These variables are used by commands or shell scripts to discover things about the environment they are operating in. Environment variables can be changed or created by the user or a program. To see a list of environment variables type "setenv" at the csh or tcsh prompt or "set" at the sh, bash, jsh or ksh prompt. In other programming languages, e.g. functional programming languages, the environment is extended with new bindings when a function's parameters are bound to its actual arguments or when new variables are declared. In a block-structured procedural language, the environment usually consists of a linked list of activation records.
- equilibrium constant — The equilibrium constant is the ratio between the amount of reactants and the amount of product for a particular chemical reaction, used to calculate chemical behavior.
- for sb's delectation — If you do something for someone's delectation, you do it to give them enjoyment or pleasure.
- general public virus — (software, legal) A pejorative name for some versions of the GNU project copyleft or General Public License (GPL), which requires that any tools or application programs incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same terms as GNU code. Thus it is alleged that the copyleft "infects" software generated with GNU tools, which may in turn infect other software that reuses any of its code.
- gorno-altai republic — a constituent republic of S Russia: mountainous, rising over 4350 m (14 500 ft) in the Altai Mountains of the south. Capital: Gorno-Altaisk. Pop: 202 900 (2002). Area: 92 600 sq km (35 740 sq miles)
- hildegard von bingen — Hildegard von (Hildegard of Bingen"Sibyl of the Rhine") 1098–1178, German nun, healer, writer, and composer.
- hindu-arabic numeral — Arabic numeral.
- hyperbolic cotangent — a hyperbolic function that is the ratio of cosh to sinh, being the reciprocal of tanh; coth
- independent variable — Mathematics. a variable in a functional relation whose value determines the value or values of other variables, as x in the relation y = 3 x 2 . Compare dependent variable (def 1).
- information builders — Distributors of LEVEL5 OBJECT. Telephone +1 800 969 INFO.
- intervening variable — a hypothetical variable postulated to account for the way in which a set of independent variables control a set of dependent variables
- laboratory assistant — laboratory technician, lab assistant
- laboratory diagnosis — scientific analysis of a disease
- laboratory equipment — apparatus for scientific research and experiments
- labour-saving device — a machine, gadget, etc, that reduces (human) effort, hard work or labour
- like a ton of bricks — (used esp of the manner of punishing or reprimanding someone) with great force; severely
- live and breathe sth — be passionately interested in sth
- marginal probability — (in a multivariate distribution) the probability of one variable taking a specific value irrespective of the values of the others
- member of parliament — A Member of Parliament is a person who has been elected by the people in a particular area to represent them in a country's parliament. The abbreviation MP is often used.
- membranous labyrinth — an intricate combination of paths or passages in which it is difficult to find one's way or to reach the exit. Synonyms: maze, network, web.
- meta-dichlorobenzene — a colorless liquid, C 6 H 4 Cl 2 , soluble in alcohol and ether: used as a fumigant and insecticide.
- navigable semicircle — the less violent half of a cyclone; the half blowing in the direction opposite to that in which the cyclone is moving and in which a vessel can run before the wind.
- net realizable value — the net value of an asset if it were to be sold, taking into account the cost of making the sale and of bringing the asset into a saleable state
- new siberian islands — an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, off the N mainland of Russia, in the Sakha Republic. Area: about 37 555 sq km (14 500 sq miles)
- nickel tetracarbonyl — nickel carbonyl.
- northern leaf blight — a disease of corn caused by the fungus Exsherohilum turcicum, characterized by elongate tan-gray elliptical spots with subsequent blighting and necrosis of leaves.
- operational database — (database) A database containing up-to-date, modifiable data, in contrast to a decision support database.
- order bill of lading — a bill of lading that is issued to the order of a shipper or consignee for delivery of the goods and that can be transferred by endorsement to third parties.
- para-dichlorobenzene — a white, crystalline, volatile, water-insoluble solid, C 6 H 4 Cl 2 , of the benzene series, having a penetrating odor: used chiefly as a moth repellent.
- particle beam weapon — a weapon that fires particle beams into the atmosphere or space
- pass in one's marble — to die
- pentobarbital sodium — a barbiturate drug used in medicine as a sedative and hypnotic. Formula: C11H17N2O3Na
- periodontal membrane — the collagenous, fibrous connective tissue between the cementum of the tooth and the alveolus.
- pipeline burst cache — (hardware, storage) (PB Cache) A synchronous cache built from pipelined SRAM. A cache in which reading or writing a new location takes multiple cycles but subsequent locations can be accessed in a single cycle. On Pentium systems in 1996, pipeline burst caches are frequently used as secondary caches. The first 8 bytes of data are transferred in 3 CPU cycles, and the next 3 8-byte pieces of data are transferred in one cycle each.
- probability function — the function the values of which are probabilities of the distinct outcomes of a discrete random variable
- public administrator — an official of a city, county, or state government.
- receivables turnover — A receivables turnover is a measure of cash flow that is calculated by dividing net credit sales by average accounts receivable.
- red-winged blackbird — a North American blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus, the male of which is black with scarlet patches, usually bordered with buff or yellow, on the bend of the wing.
- royal british legion — an organization founded in 1921 to provide services and assistance for former members of the armed forces