22-letter words containing l, a
- armed response vehicle — (in Britain) a police vehicle carrying armed officers who are trained to respond to incidents involving firearms
- ars longa, vita brevis — art (is) long, life (is) short
- articulatory phonetics — the branch of phonetics concerned with the production of speech sounds
- artificial respiration — Artificial respiration is the forcing of air into the lungs of someone who has stopped breathing, usually by blowing through their mouth or nose, in order to keep them alive and to help them to start breathing again.
- as broad as it is long — amounting to the same thing; without advantage either way
- astronomical telescope — any telescope designed and mounted for use in astronomy. Such telescopes usually form inverted images
- 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.
- bartolome de las casas — Bartolomé de las [bahr-taw-law-me th e lahs] /ˌbɑr tɔ lɔˈmɛ ðɛ lɑs/ (Show IPA), Las Casas, Bartolomé de.
- basal body temperature — the lowest temperature the body reaches in the resting state, typically during sleep. It is usually measured on waking
- battle of the atlantic — the struggle for control of the sea routes around the United Kingdom during World War II, esp 1940–43
- beat someone to a pulp — If someone is beaten to a pulp or beaten to pulp, they are hit repeatedly until they are very badly injured.
- bell, book, and candle — instruments used formerly in excommunications and other ecclesiastical acts
- 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.
- bereavement counsellor — a person giving advice to bereaved people to help them cope with their grief
- bernoulli's lemniscate — Analytic Geometry. lemniscate.
- beta-indoleacetic acid — indoleacetic acid.
- better late than never — If you say better late than never when someone has done something, you think they should have done it earlier.
- 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 hole of calcutta — a small dungeon in which in 1756 the Nawab of Bengal reputedly confined 146 English prisoners, of whom only 23 survived
- 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.
- block redundancy check — Longitudinal Redundancy Check
- blue-winged kookaburra — a related smaller bird D. Leachii, of tropical Australia and New Guinea
- bone marrow transplant — the transplantation of bone marrow from donor to recipient
- bone-marrow transplant — Surgery. a technique in which a small amount of bone marrow is withdrawn by a syringe from a donor's pelvic bone and injected into a patient whose ability to make new blood cells has been impaired by a disease, as anemia or cancer, or by exposure to radiation.
- 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.
- boundary value problem — any of a series of problems occurring in the solution of a differential equation with boundary conditions.