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22-letter words containing i, o

  • bidirectional printing — (hardware)   A feature of a printer whose printer head can print both when moving left to right and when moving right to left. Also known as "boustrophedonic".
  • big bend national park — a national park in W Texas, on the Rio Grande. 1080 sq. mi. (2800 sq. km).
  • biological engineering — bioengineering.
  • biomedical engineering — bioengineering (def 1).
  • black-scholes equation — a partial differential equation used to estimate the changing value of an option over time
  • 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.
  • born in/out of wedlock — If a baby is born in wedlock, it is born while its parents are married. If it is born out of wedlock, it is born at a time when its parents are not married.
  • 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
  • buffered write-through — (memory management)   A variation of write-through where the cache uses a "write buffer" to hold data being written back to main memory. This frees the cache to service read requests while the write is taking place. There is usually only one stage of buffering so subsequent writes must wait until the first is complete. Most accesses are reads so buffered write-through is only useful for very slow main memory.
  • 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.
  • c programmer's disease — (programming)   The tendency of the undisciplined C programmer to set arbitrary but supposedly generous static limits on table sizes (defined, if you're lucky, by constants in header files) rather than taking the trouble to do proper dynamic storage allocation. If an application user later needs to put 68 elements into a table of size 50, the afflicted programmer reasons that he or she can easily reset the table size to 68 (or even as much as 70, to allow for future expansion) and recompile. This gives the programmer the comfortable feeling of having made the effort to satisfy the user's (unreasonable) demands, and often affords the user multiple opportunities to explore the marvellous consequences of fandango on core. In severe cases of the disease, the programmer cannot comprehend why each fix of this kind seems only to further disgruntle the user.
  • calculus of variations — a branch of calculus concerned with maxima and minima of definite integrals
  • cargo cult programming — (programming, humour)   A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. A cargo cult programmer will usually explain the extra code as a way of working around some bug encountered in the past, but usually neither the bug nor the reason the code apparently avoided the bug was ever fully understood (compare shotgun debugging, voodoo programming). The term "cargo cult" is a reference to aboriginal religions that grew up in the South Pacific after World War II. The practices of these cults centre on building elaborate mockups of aeroplanes and military style landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of the god-like aeroplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war. Hackish usage probably derives from Richard Feynman's characterisation of certain practices as "cargo cult science" in his book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" (W. W. Norton & Co, New York 1985, ISBN 0-393-01921-7).
  • cast in one's lot with — to share in the activities or fortunes of (someone else)
  • catch sight of someone — If you catch sight of someone, you suddenly see them, often briefly.
  • categorical imperative — (in the ethics of Kant) the unconditional moral principle that one's behaviour should accord with universalizable maxims which respect persons as ends in themselves; the obligation to do one's duty for its own sake and not in pursuit of further ends
  • catoctin mountain park — a federal park in N central Maryland: site of Camp David. 9 sq. mi. (23 sq. km).
  • cavity wall insulation — insulation injected into the space between cavity walls
  • cease-and-desist order — an order by a government agency to a person or corporation to terminate a business practice found by the agency to be illegal or unfair.
  • centimeter-gram-second — designating or of a system of measurement in which the centimeter, gram, and second are the units of length, mass, and time, respectively
  • central locking device — a small device that controls the central locking on a motor vehicle
  • certificate of deposit — a negotiable certificate issued by a bank in return for a deposit of money for a term of up to five years
  • 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.
  • chemical sympathectomy — the chemical destruction of one or more parts of the sympathetic nervous system
  • chemical-sympathectomy — sympathectomy (def 2).
  • chicago board of trade — a major exchange in the United States that deals in futures, notably of grains and metals. Abbreviation: CBT.
  • chief academic officer — an official in a university, college, or medical school who usually reports directly to the president, chancellor, rector, or vice chancellor
  • chip off the old block — a person who resembles one of his or her parents in behaviour
  • chip on one's shoulder — an inclination to fight or quarrel
  • chlorotrifluoromethane — a colorless gas, CClF 3 , used chiefly as a refrigerant, in the hardening of metals, and in pharmaceutical processing.
  • chorionic gonadotropin — Also called human chorionic gonadotropin. Biochemistry. a hormone, produced in the incipient placenta of pregnant women, that stimulates the production of estrogen and progesterone: its presence in blood or urine is an indication of pregnancy.
  • chromosomal aberration — any irregularity or abnormality of chromosome distribution, number, structure, or arrangement.
  • cirrhosis of the liver — liver disease
  • city of brotherly love — Philadelphia, Pa. (used as a nickname).
  • classical conditioning — the alteration in responding that occurs when two stimuli are regularly paired in close succession: the response originally given to the second stimulus comes to be given to the first
  • cockpit voice recorder — a device which records conversations in and communications from the cockpit of an aircraft
  • cognitive architecture — (architecture)   A computer architecure involving non-deterministic, multiple inference processes, as found in neural networks. Cognitive architectures model the human brain and contrast with single processor computers. The term might also refer to software architectures, e.g. fuzzy logic.
  • coiled tubing drilling — Coiled tubing drilling is drilling using a narrow (1.75 to 3.5in) seamless tube of high-grade steel, wound onto a reel.
  • collateral circulation — circulation of blood through a network of minor vessels that become enlarged and joined with adjacent vessels when a major vein or artery is impaired, as by obstruction.
  • collective pitch lever — a lever in a helicopter to change the angle of attack of all the rotor blades simultaneously, causing it to rise or descend
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