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20-letter words containing i

  • augur ill (or well) — to be a bad (or good) omen
  • australian rye grass — a European grass, Lolium multiflorum, naturalized in North America, having flowering spikes and used as a winter turf.
  • automobile insurance — Automobile insurance is insurance coverage for cars.
  • auxiliary power unit — an additional engine fitted to an aircraft to operate when the main engines are not in use
  • axiomatic set theory — (theory)   One of several approaches to set theory, consisting of a formal language for talking about sets and a collection of axioms describing how they behave. There are many different axiomatisations for set theory. Each takes a slightly different approach to the problem of finding a theory that captures as much as possible of the intuitive idea of what a set is, while avoiding the paradoxes that result from accepting all of it, the most famous being Russell's paradox. The main source of trouble in naive set theory is the idea that you can specify a set by saying whether each object in the universe is in the "set" or not. Accordingly, the most important differences between different axiomatisations of set theory concern the restrictions they place on this idea (known as "comprehension"). NBG (von Neumann-Bernays-Goedel) set theory sort of allows comprehension for all formulae without restriction, but distinguishes between two kinds of set, so that the sets produced by applying comprehension are only second-class sets. NBG is exactly as powerful as ZF, in the sense that any statement that can be formalised in both theories is a theorem of ZF if and only if it is a theorem of ZFC. MK (Morse-Kelley) set theory is a strengthened version of NBG, with a simpler axiom system. It is strictly stronger than NBG, and it is possible that NBG might be consistent but MK inconsistent. ML ("Modern Logic") is to NF as NBG is to ZF. (Its name derives from the title of the book in which Quine introduced an early, defective, form of it). It is stronger than ZF (it can prove things that ZF can't), but if NF is consistent then ML is too.
  • babylonian captivity — the exile of the Jews in Babylonia from about 586 to about 538 bc
  • background radiation — low-intensity radiation from, for example, small amounts of radioisotopes in soil, air, building materials, etc
  • backwards compatible — backward compatibility
  • bacteriochlorophylls — Plural form of bacteriochlorophyll.
  • baggage reclaim area — the place in an airport to which passengers go to recover their baggage after a flight
  • ballet-wrap cardigan — a cardigan with wrapover fronts which are fastened with wraparound ties
  • ballistic trajectory — the path of an unpowered object, as a missile, moving only under the influence of gravity and possibly atmospheric friction and with its surface providing no significant lift to alter the course of flight.
  • baptism for the dead — the baptism of a living person in the place of and for the sake of one who has died unbaptized: now practiced chiefly by Mormons.
  • barking and dagenham — a borough of E Greater London. Pop: 165 900 (2003 est). Area: 34 sq km (13 sq miles)
  • barred spiral galaxy — a spiral galaxy whose center has the form of an extended bar.
  • bartramian sandpiper — upland sandpiper.
  • basal cell carcinoma — a common and usually curable skin cancer that arises from epithelial cells and rarely metastasizes: often associated with overexposure to sunlight.
  • basal metabolic rate — the rate at which heat is produced by the body at rest, 12 to 14 hours after eating, measured in kilocalories per square metre of body surface per hour
  • basic encoding rules — (protocol, standard)   (BER) ASN.1 encoding rules for producing self-identifying and self-delimiting transfer syntax for data structures described in ASN.1 notations. BER is an self-identifying and self-delimiting encoding scheme, which means that each data value can be identified, extracted and decoded individually. Huw Rogers once described BER as "a triumph of bloated theory over clean implementation". He also criticises it as designed around bitstreams with arbitrary boundaries between data which can only be determined at a high level. Documents: ITU-T X.690, ISO 8825-1. See also CER, DER, PER.
  • basic lead carbonate — ceruse.
  • basic object adapter — (architecture)   (BOA) Part of the CORBA architecture.
  • basic oxygen process — a process for refining steel in which oxygen is blown into the molten iron
  • basic rate interface — (communications)   (BRI, 2B+D, 2B1D) An Integrated Services Digital Network channel consisting of two 64 kbps "bearer" (B) channels and one 16 kbps "delta" (D) channel, giving a total data rate of 144 kbps. The B channels are used for voice or user data, and the D channel is used for control and signalling and/or X.25 packet networking. BRI is the kind of ISDN interface most likely to be found in residential service.
  • bats-wing coral-tree — a small tree, Erythrina verspertilio, of tropical and subtropical Australia with red flowers and leaves shaped like the wings of a bat
  • be (or get) wise to — to be (or become) aware of; have (or attain) a proper understanding of
  • be for the high jump — to be liable to receive a severe reprimand or punishment
  • be getting somewhere — If you say that you are getting somewhere, you mean that you are making progress towards achieving something.
  • be in the market for — to wish to buy or acquire
  • be set in one's ways — If you say that someone is set in their ways, you are being critical of the fact that they have fixed habits and ideas which they will not easily change, even though they may be old-fashioned.
  • be shot through with — If something is shot through with an element or feature, it contains a lot of that element or feature.
  • be-twixt and between — betwixt and between, neither the one nor the other; in a middle or unresolved position: Not wanting to side with either her father or her mother, she was betwixt and between.
  • beat the shit out of — to give a severe beating to
  • beaverhead mountains — a mountain range on the border of E Idaho and SW Montana, in the Bitterroot Range. 10,961 feet (3343 meters).
  • beggar-your-neighbor — a children's card game for two, played with 52 cards, that is won when a player captures all of the cards.
  • belgian shepherd dog — a medium-sized well-proportioned dog of a breed that resembles an Alsatian in appearance and is often used as a sheepdog or a guard dog
  • belgorod-dnestrovski — a port in SW Ukraine, on the Dniester estuary: belonged to Romania from 1918 until 1940; under Soviet rule (1944–91). Pop: 48 100 (2004 est)
  • benavente y martinez — Jacinto. 1866–1954, Spanish dramatist and critic, who wrote over 150 plays. Nobel prize for literature 1922
  • benefit of the doubt — a favorable opinion or judgment adopted despite uncertainty.
  • benoit b. mandelbrot — Benoit Mandelbrot
  • benzene hexachloride — a compound, C6H6Cl6, used as an insecticide
  • benzenesulfonic acid — a fine, needlelike substance, C 6 H 6 SO 3 , used chiefly as a catalyst and in the synthesis of phenol, resorcinol, and other organic products.
  • benztropine mesylate — a synthetic anticholinergic, C 21 H 25 NO⋅CH 4 O 3 S, used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease.
  • benzyl isoamyl ether — a colorless liquid, C 12 H 18 O, used in soap perfumes.
  • bernard of clairvaux — Saint. ?1090–1153, French abbot and theologian, who founded the stricter branch of the Cistercians in 1115
  • bernese mountain dog — a strong sturdy dog of a breed with a bushy tail and a long silky black coat with reddish-brown and white markings, often used as a working farm dog
  • best-efforts selling — a method of underwriting a security whereby a syndicate takes a new issue without any guarantees of sale to the issuer.
  • bigmouth buffalofish — a buffalofish, Ictiobus cyprinellus, found in central North America, characterized by a large mouth.
  • bimodal distribution — a frequency distribution with two modes
  • binary coded decimal — (data)   (BCD, packed decimal) A number representation where a number is expressed as a sequence of decimal digits and then each decimal digit is encoded as a four-bit binary number (a nibble). E.g. decimal 92 would be encoded as the eight-bit sequence 1001 0010. In some cases, the right-most nibble contains the sign (positive or negative). It is easier to convert decimal numbers to and from BCD than binary and, though BCD is often converted to binary for arithmetic processing, it is possible to build hardware that operates directly on BCD.
  • binary-coded decimal — a number in binary code written in groups of four bits, each group representing one digit of the corresponding decimal number
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