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22-letter words containing l, a, i

  • at full tilt/full tilt — To move full tilt or at full tilt means to move with as much speed, energy, or force as possible.
  • atlantic standard time — the local time used in eastern Canada, four hours behind Greenwich Mean Time
  • attributed file system — (storage)   (AtFS) The basis of the Shape_VC toolkit. Cooperative work within projects is supported by a status model controlling visibility of version objects, locking, and "long transactions" for synchronising concurrent updates. The concept of object attributes provides a basis for storing management information with versions and passing this information between individual tools. This mechanism is useful for building integrated environments from a set of unrelated tools.
  • audio video interleave — (multimedia)   (AVI) An audio-video standard designed by Microsoft. Apparently proprietary and Microsoft Windows-specific.
  • automatic gain control — control of a radio receiver in which the gain varies inversely with the magnitude of the input, thus maintaining the output at an approximately constant level
  • bacillus thuringiensis — a bacterium used in genetically altered form in the biological control of budworms, gypsy moth larvae, Japanese beetles, and other insect pests. Abbreviation: B.t.
  • backward combatability — (humour)   /bak'w*d k*m-bat'*-bil'*-tee/ (Play on "backward compatibility") A property of hardware or software revisions in which previous protocols, formats, layouts, etc. are irrevocably discarded in favour of "new and improved" protocols, formats and layouts, leaving the previous ones not merely deprecated but actively defeated. (Too often, the old and new versions cannot definitively be distinguished, such that lingering instances of the previous ones yield crashes or other infelicitous effects, as opposed to a simple "version mismatch" message.) A backward compatible change, on the other hand, allows old versions to coexist without crashes or error messages, but too many major changes incorporating elaborate backward compatibility processing can lead to extreme software bloat. See also flag day.
  • backward compatibility — (jargon)   Able to share data or commands with older versions of itself, or sometimes other older systems, particularly systems it intends to supplant. Sometimes backward compatibility is limited to being able to read old data but does not extend to being able to write data in a format that can be read by old versions. For example, WordPerfect 6.0 can read WordPerfect 5.1 files, so it is backward compatible. It can be said that Perl is backward compatible with awk, because Perl was (among other things) intended to replace awk, and can, with a converter, run awk programs. See also: backward combatability. Compare: forward compatible.
  • bacterial endocarditis — a bacterial infection of the inner lining of the heart, most often of the heart valves, characterized by fever, enlarged spleen, and heart murmur.
  • badlands national park — a national park in SW South Dakota: rock formations and animal fossils. 380 sq. mi. (985 sq. km).
  • balance sheet equation — A balance sheet equation is a basic accounting equation that states that assets equal liabilities plus equity.
  • baldassare castiglione — Baldassare [bahl-dahs-sah-re] /ˌbɑl dɑsˈsɑ rɛ/ (Show IPA), 1478–1529, Italian diplomat and author.
  • ballad of reading gaol — a poem (1898) by Oscar Wilde.
  • ballistic galvanometer — a type of galvanometer for measuring surges of current. After deflection the instrument returns slowly to its original reading
  • baptismal regeneration — the doctrine that regeneration and sanctification are received in and through baptism.
  • battle of the atlantic — the struggle for control of the sea routes around the United Kingdom during World War II, esp 1940–43
  • beltsville small white — a small domestic turkey developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fit small ovens when being cooked.
  • benjamin franklin wade — Benjamin Franklin, 1800–78, U.S. lawyer and antislavery politician.
  • benzenecarboxylic acid — benzoic acid.
  • bernoulli's lemniscate — Analytic Geometry. lemniscate.
  • beta-indoleacetic acid — indoleacetic acid.
  • 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 mercuric sulfide — a crystalline, water-insoluble, poisonous compound, HgS, occurring as a coarse, black powder (black mercuric sulfide) or as a fine, bright-scarlet powder (red mercuric sulfide) used chiefly as a pigment and as a source of the free metal.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • brachiocephalic artery — a major artery, arising from the arch of the aorta, that supplies blood to the right arm and the head.
  • bridge of san luis rey — a novel (1927) by Thornton Wilder.
  • 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.
  • 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).
  • cascading style sheets — (web)   (CSS) An extension to HTML to allow styles, e.g. colour, font, size to be specified for certain elements of a hypertext document. Style information can be included in-line in the HTML file or in a separate CSS file (which can then be easily shared by multiple HTML files). Multiple levels of CSS can be used to allow selective overriding of styles.
  • cast in one's lot with — to share in the activities or fortunes of (someone else)
  • catalyst transfer line — A catalyst transfer line is equipment which provides a smooth and constant catalyst flow.
  • 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
  • cavity wall insulation — insulation injected into the space between cavity walls
  • cell-mediated immunity — immunity independent of antibody but dependent on the recognition of antigen by T cells and their subsequent destruction of cells bearing the antigen or on the secretion by T cells of lymphokines that enhance the ability of phagocytes to eliminate the antigen.
  • central african empire — a former name (1976–79) of Central African Republic.
  • central locking device — a small device that controls the central locking on a motor vehicle
  • 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
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