22-letter words containing s, a, b, i, n
- first cab off the rank — the first person, etc, to do or take advantage of something
- fort benjamin harrison — a military reservation and U.S. Army training center in central Indiana, NE of Indianapolis.
- full english breakfast — morning meal of eggs, bacon, etc.
- general public license — (legal) (GPL, note US spelling) The licence applied to most software from the Free Software Foundation and the GNU project and other authors who choose to use it. The licences for most software are designed to prevent users from sharing or changing it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee the freedom to share and change free software - to make sure the software is free for all its users. The GPL is designed to make sure that anyone can distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if they wish); that they receive source code or can get it if they want; that they can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that they know they can do these things. The GPL forbids anyone to deny others these rights or to ask them to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for those who distribute copies of the software or modify it. See also General Public Virus.
- great australian bight — a wide bay in S Australia.
- hepatitis non-a, non-b — a disease of the liver that is clinically indistinguishable from hepatitis B but is caused by a retrovirus or retroviruslike agent.
- hermann-mauguin symbol — a notation for indicating a particular point group.
- in all one's born days — so far in one's life
- in one's birthday suit — naked; nude
- in one's own back yard — close at hand
- in someone's bad books — regarded by someone with disfavour
- in/within sb's hearing — If someone says something in your hearing or within your hearing, you can hear what they say because they are with you or near you.
- inertia-reel seat belt — a type of car seat belt in which the belt is free to unwind from a metal drum except when the drum locks as a result of rapid deceleration
- interoperable database — A database front-end which communicates with multiple heterogenous databases and makes them appear as a single homogenous entity with semantic calls. See ODBC.
- islands of the blessed — lands where the souls of heroes and good men were taken after death
- it's london to a brick — it is certain
- japanese umbrella pine — a single aberrant species of pine, Sciadopitys verticillata, in which the leaves are fused in pairs and the crown is spire-shaped
- justification by works — the belief that a person becomes just before God by the performance of good works: the doctrine against which Luther protested in inaugurating the Protestant Reformation.
- label switching router — (networking) (LSR) A device that typically resides somewhere in the middle of a network and is capable of forwarding datagrams by label switching. In many cases, especially early versions of MPLS networks, a LSR will typically be a modified ATM switch that forwards datagrams based upon a label in the VPI/VCI field.
- lady's not for burning — a verse play (1948) by Christopher Fry.
- little st bernard pass — a pass over the Savoy Alps, between Bourg-Saint-Maurice, France, and La Thuile, Italy: 11th-century hospice. Height: 2187 m (7177 ft)
- make a beeline for sth — If you make a beeline for a place, you go to it as quickly and directly as possible.
- make contact (with sb) — If you make contact with someone, you find out where they are and talk or write to them.
- metasyntactic variable — (grammar) Strictly, a variable used in metasyntax, but often used for any name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under discussion. The word foo is the canonical example. To avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use "foo" or other words like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a scratch file that may be deleted at any time. To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here are a few common signatures: bazola, ztesch: Stanford (from mid-'70s on). zxc, spqr, wombat: Cambridge University (England). shme: Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short /e/. blarg, wibble: New Zealand Of all these, only "foo" and "bar" are universal (and baz nearly so). The compounds foobar and "foobaz" also enjoy very wide currency. Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; barf and mumble, for example. See also Commonwealth Hackish for discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the Commonwealth.
- missing persons bureau — the part of the Police Force dealing with tracing missing people
- mozilla public license — Open source license
- non-maskable interrupt — (NMI) An IRQ 7 on the PDP-11 or 680x0 or the NMI line on an 80x86. In contrast with a priority interrupt (which might be ignored, although that is unlikely), an NMI is *never* ignored.
- object-oriented pascal — Object Pascal
- on a shoestring budget — with very little money to spend
- one's ears are burning — one is aware of being the topic of another's conversation
- peanut-butter sandwich — a sandwich with a filling of peanut-butter
- portable standard lisp — (language) (PSL) A dialect of Lisp from Utah University. PSL is available as a kit for 68000 and also runs on VAX. It compiles Lisp to C-code virtual machine language.
- prawn-sandwich brigade — sports fans who are perceived to lack passion and commitment, and who it is supposed attend matches in order to eat food and buy merchandise rather than cheer on their team
- preestablished harmony — (in the philosophy of Leibnitz) synchronous operation of all monads, since their simultaneous creation, in accordance with the preexisting plan of God.
- probationary assistant — a teacher in the first probationary years
- public domain software — public domain
- pulmonary tuberculosis — tuberculosis of the lungs.
- read between the lines — a mark or stroke long in proportion to its breadth, made with a pen, pencil, tool, etc., on a surface: a line down the middle of the page.
- replacement cost basis — Replacement cost basis is a method of valuing insured property in which the cost of replacing property is calculated without a reduction for depreciation.
- research establishment — an establishment or institution where research or investigation into a subject, topic, etc, can be conducted
- round-table discussion — a discussion held at a meeting of parties or people on equal terms
- sainte anne de beaupre — a village in S Quebec, Canada, on the St. Lawrence River: shrine and basilica.
- sainte-anne-de-beaupré — village in S Quebec, Canada, on the St. Lawrence: site of a Rom. Catholic shrine (established 1658): pop. 3,000
- satellite broadcasting — the transmission of television or radio programmes from an artificial satellite at a power suitable for direct reception in the home
- sb can whistle for sth — If you say that someone can whistle for a particular thing, you mean that you are not willing or able to give it to them.
- scalable sampling rate — (compression, standard, algorithm) (SSR) See, e.g., MPEG-4 AAC SSR.
- scissors-and-paste job — if you describe a piece of work as a scissors and paste job, you mean that it has been mechanically compiled, as if by simply cutting and pasting different parts to make a new whole
- search the fucking web — (web, jargon) (Always abbreviated STFW) A response implying that an inquirer could have easily found an answer to his question using Google or some other web search engine. It is now often quicker and more productive to search the World-Wide Web than to RTFM.
- shaken but not stirred — If you say that someone has been shaken but not stirred by an experience, you mean that they have been slightly disturbed or emotionally affected by it, but not deeply enough to change their behaviour or way of thinking.
- simultaneous broadcast — a programme, etc, broadcast simultaneously on radio and television