21-letter words containing o, u, b, a
- first baron ashburton — Alexander, 1st Baron Ashburton, 1774–1848, British statesman.
- gamma hydroxybutyrate — a substance that occurs naturally in the brain, used medically as a sedative but also as a recreational drug and alleged aphrodisiac: known as 'liquid ecstasy' when mixed with alcohol
- gaussian distribution — normal distribution
- george bryan brummell — George Bryan II, Beau Brummell.
- give sb the runaround — If someone gives you the runaround, they deliberately do not give you all the information or help that you want, and send you to another person or place to get it.
- gold bullion standard — a gold standard in which gold is not coined but may be purchased at a fixed price for foreign exchange.
- goldbach's conjecture — the conjecture that every even number greater than two is the sum of two prime numbers
- have someone's number — a numeral or group of numerals.
- horizontal tabulation — (character) (tab, Control-I, HT, ASCII 9) A character which when displayed or printed causes the following character to be placed at the next "tabstop" - the column whose number is a multiple of the current tab width. Commonly (especially in Unix(?)) the tab width is eight, so, counting from the left margin (column zero), the tab stops are at columns 8, 16, 24, up to the width of the screen or page. A tab width of four or two is often preferred when indenting program source code to conserve indentation. Represented as "\t" in C, Unix, and derivatives.
- hubble classification — a method of classifying galaxies depending on whether they are elliptical, spiral, barred spiral, or irregular
- hypogammaglobulinemia — A type of immune disorder characterised by a reduction in all types of gamma globulins.
- joseph bonaparte gulf — an inlet of the Timor Sea in N Australia. Width: 360 km (225 miles)
- jump on the bandwagon — do sth because it is popular
- just a bunch of disks — (jargon, storage) (JBOD, or "Just a Bunch of Drives") A storage subsystems using multiple independent disk drives, as opposed to one form of RAID or another. For example, Unisys open storage provides JBOD in both SCSI and fibre channel interfaces.
- knights of st columba — an international, semi-secret fraternal and charitable order for Catholic laymen, which originated in New Haven, Connecticut in 1882 (the Knights of Columbus)
- language-based editor — language-sensitive editor
- lap and shoulder belt — a car seat belt
- league of arab states — Arab League.
- luck was on sb's side — If you say that luck was on someone's side, you mean that they succeeded in something by chance as well as by their own efforts or ability.
- maître d'hôtel butter — melted butter mixed with parsley and lemon juice
- mauna kea observatory — an astronomical observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, situated at an altitude of 13,600 feet (4145 meters).
- national public radio — a nationwide network of nonprofit radio stations supported in part by U.S. government funds distributed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, often affiliated with a public television station or educational institution. Abbreviation: NPR.
- negotiable instrument — order or promise to pay money
- negotiable securities — securities that are legally transferable in title from one party to another
- northumberland strait — the part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence that separates Prince Edward Island from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, in SE Canada. About 200 miles (320 km) long; 9–30 miles (15–48 km) wide.
- not care a hang about — to not care the least bit about
- oblique circular cone — a cone whose surface is generated by lines joining a fixed point to the points of a circle, the fixed point lying on a line that is not perpendicular to the circle at its center.
- on o's best behaviour — If someone is on their best behaviour, they are trying very hard to behave well.
- optical double (star) — double star (sense 2)
- potassium bicarbonate — a white, crystalline, slightly alkaline, salty-tasting, water-soluble powder, KHCO 3 , produced by the passage of carbon dioxide through an aqueous potassium carbonate solution: used in cookery as a leavening agent and in medicine as an antacid.
- premium savings bonds — (in Britain) bonds issued by the Treasury since 1956 for purchase by the public. No interest is paid but there is a monthly draw for cash prizes of various sums
- printed circuit board — a circuit in which the interconnecting conductors and some of the circuit components have been printed, etched, etc., onto a sheet or board of dielectric material (PC board, printed-circuit board)
- probable maximum loss — Probable maximum loss is the maximum amount of loss that can be expected under normal circumstances.
- public administration — the implementation of public policy, largely by the executive branch.
- public transportation — means of fare-paying travel
- push the panic button — an alarm button for use in an emergency, as to summon help.
- put sb out to pasture — If you say that someone is being put out to pasture, you mean they are no longer being employed because they are considered to be too old or no longer useful.
- put someone's back up — to annoy someone
- rayleigh distribution — (mathematics) A curve that yields a good approximation to the actual labour curves on software projects.
- rectangular hyperbola — a hyperbola with perpendicular asymptotes
- reverberatory furnace — See at reverberatory (def 2).
- rob peter to pay paul — to take something from (someone) by unlawful force or threat of violence; steal from.
- roodepoort-maraisburg — a city in S Transvaal, in the NE Republic of South Africa.
- sampling distribution — the distribution of a statistic based on all possible random samples that can be drawn from a given population.
- san gabriel mountains — a mountain range in S California, N of Los Angeles. Highest peak, San Antonio Peak, 10,080 feet (3072 meters).
- saponification number — the number of milligrams of potassium hydroxide required to saponify one gram of a given ester, especially a glyceride.
- satisficing behaviour — the form of behaviour demonstrated by firms who seek satisfactory profits and satisfactory growth rather than maximum profits
- single spanish burton — a tackle having a runner as well as the fall supporting the load, giving a mechanical advantage of three, neglecting friction.
- snr bandwidth product — (communications) The integral of the SNR over frequency. The SNR bandwidth product is an important limit in the capacity of a communication channel.
- sodium metabisulphite — an inorganic compound with the chemical formula Na2S2O5 that is used as a preservative, antioxidant and disinfectant