20-letter words containing n, a, y, b
- 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
- nickel tetracarbonyl — nickel carbonyl.
- no two ways about it — If you say that there are no two ways about it, you are emphasizing that there is no doubt at all about a particular situation or about how it should be interpreted.
- probability function — the function the values of which are probabilities of the distinct outcomes of a discrete random variable
- prothonotary warbler — a wood warbler, Protonotaria citrea, of the eastern U.S., having an orange-yellow head and underparts, and bluish-gray wings and tail.
- 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.
- 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.
- royal british legion — an organization founded in 1921 to provide services and assistance for former members of the armed forces
- rub up the wrong way — to arouse anger (in); annoy
- self-belaying system — (in climbing) equipment used to pay out rope as required and thus enable a climber to self-belay
- shaken baby syndrome — a usually fatal condition of abused infants brought on by violent shaking by the arms or shoulders that causes severe internal bleeding, especially around the brain and in the eyes.
- spectroscopic binary — a binary star having components that are not sufficiently separated to be resolved by a telescope, known to be a binary only bythe variations in wavelength of emitted light that are detected by a spectroscope.
- subscription library — a commercial lending library
- tchebycheff equation — a differential equation of the form (1 − x 2) d 2 y/dx 2 − x dy/dx + n 2 y = 0, where n is any nonnegative integer.
- tetrahydrocannabinol — a compound, C 21 H 30 O 2 , that is the physiologically active component in cannabis preparations (marijuana, hashish, etc.) derived from the Indian hemp plant or produced synthetically. Abbreviation: THC.
- the canterbury tales — an uncompleted sequence of tales by Chaucer, written for the most part after 1387.
- to get your bearings — to find out where one is or to find out what one should do next
- to get your own back — If you get your own back on someone, you have your revenge on them because of something bad that they have done to you.
- to keep your balance — If you keep your balance, for example, when standing in a moving vehicle, you remain steady and do not fall over. If you lose your balance, you become unsteady and fall over.
- walton and weybridge — a city in Surrey, SE England: a London suburb.
- webster's dictionary — Informal. a dictionary of the English language, especially American English, such as Dictionary.com.
- westminster assembly — a convocation that met at Westminster, London, 1643–49, and formulated the articles of faith (Westminster Confession of Faith) that are accepted as authoritative by most Presbyterian churches.
- wintergreen barberry — a Chinese evergreen shrub, Berberis julianae, of the barberry family, having spiny leaves, dark green above, pale beneath, clusters of yellow flowers, and bluish-black fruit.