20-letter words containing n, a, m, b
- compensating balance — Also, compensated balance, compensation balance. a balance wheel in a timepiece, designed to compensate for variations in tension in the hair spring caused by changes in temperature.
- constituent assembly — A constituent assembly is a body of representatives that is elected to create or change their country's constitution.
- diamondback terrapin — any edible North American terrapin of the genus Malaclemys, esp M. terrapin, occurring in brackish and tidal waters and having diamond-shaped markings on the shell: family Emydidae
- drum and bugle corps — a marching band of drum players and buglers.
- dun & bradstreet — an agency furnishing subscribers with information as to the financial standing and credit rating of businesses
- dynamic link library — Dynamically Linked Library
- embryo vitrification — a method of in vitro fertilization in which the embryo is exposed to a vitreous solution and frozen before being thawed and implanted into the uterus
- 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.
- football hooliganism — the actions or behaviour of a football hooligan
- hindu-arabic numeral — Arabic numeral.
- how about something? — what is your wish, opinion, or information concerning something (or someone)?
- hudson's bay company — a company chartered in England in 1670 to carry on fur trading with the Indians in North America.
- human parvovirus b19 — Pathology. a mild infection, most often seen in children or young adults, caused by a small virus ((the human parvovirus B19)) and marked by a blotchy rash on the cheeks, arms, and legs.
- hungarian bromegrass — a pasture grass, Bromus inermis, native to Europe, having smooth blades.
- in bad circumstances — (of a person) in a bad financial situation
- in the public domain — able to be discussed and examined freely by the general public
- indian cucumber root — a North American plant, Medeola virginiana, of the lily family, having whorled leaves, nodding, greenish-yellow flowers, and an edible root.
- information builders — Distributors of LEVEL5 OBJECT. Telephone +1 800 969 INFO.
- intestinal amebiasis — amebic dysentery.
- laboratory equipment — apparatus for scientific research and experiments
- law of large numbers — the theorem in probability theory that the number of successes increases as the number of experiments increases and approximates the probability times the number of experiments for a large number of experiments.
- macias nguema biyogo — a former name of Bioko.
- marginal probability — (in a multivariate distribution) the probability of one variable taking a specific value irrespective of the values of the others
- mean something to sb — If a name, word, or phrase means something to you, you have heard it before and you know what it refers to.
- megabytes per second — (unit) (MBps, MB/s) Millions of bytes per second. A unit of data rate. 1 MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes per second (not 1,048,576).
- 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.
- methylbenzyl acetate — methylphenylcarbinyl acetate.
- mexican jumping bean — jumping bean.
- microwave background — a background of microwave electromagnetic radiation with a black-body spectrum discovered in 1965, understood to be the thermal remnant of the big bang with which the universe began
- monkey on one's back — any mammal of the order Primates, including the guenons, macaques, langurs, and capuchins, but excluding humans, the anthropoid apes, and, usually, the tarsier and prosimians. Compare New World monkey, Old World monkey.
- moreton bay chestnut — an Australian leguminous tree, Castanospermum australe, having thin smooth bark and yellow or reddish flowers: used in furniture manufacture
- most significant bit — (MSB) Bit n-1 in an n bit binary number, the bit with the greatest weight (2^(n-1)). The first or leftmost bit when the number is written in the usual way.
- multiplication table — Arithmetic. a tabular listing of the products of any two numbers of a set, usually of the integers 1 through 10 or 1 through 12.
- 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.
- neon lamp (or tube) — a discharge lamp containing neon, that ionizes and glows with a red light (neon light) when an electric current is sent through it: used esp. in advertising signs
- nictitating membrane — a thin membrane, or inner or third eyelid, present in many animals, capable of being drawn across the eyeball, as for protection.
- 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.
- pick someone's brain — to obtain information or ideas from someone
- potassium binoxalate — a white, crystalline, hygroscopic, poisonous solid, KHC 2 O 4 , that is usually hydrated: used chiefly for removing ink stains, cleaning metal and wood, and in photography.
- public administrator — an official of a city, county, or state government.
- quantum bogodynamics — /kwon'tm boh"goh-di:-nam"iks/ A theory that characterises the universe in terms of bogon sources (such as politicians, used-car salesmen, TV evangelists, and suits in general), bogon sinks (such as taxpayers and computers), and bogosity potential fields. Bogon absorption causes human beings to behave mindlessly and machines to fail (and may also cause both to emit secondary bogons); however, the precise mechanics of bogon-computron interaction are not yet understood. Quantum bogodynamics is most often invoked to explain the sharp increase in hardware and software failures in the presence of suits; the latter emit bogons, which the former absorb.
- queen's remembrancer — (in Great Britain) a judiciary official who collects debts owed to the king.
- rocky mountain basic — (language) The BASIC language used by Hewlett Packard on their 680x0-based computers. Rocky Mountain Basic is good for interfaces to IEEE 488 controls and contains many mathematical and matrix functions. It has about 600 commands. Typical applications include automatic test stations.