20-letter words containing s, a, b, u
- disability insurance — insurance providing income to a policyholder who is disabled and cannot work.
- distributed database — A collection of several different databases that looks like a single database to the user. An example is the Internet Domain Name System (DNS).
- distributed practice — learning with reasonably long intervals between separate occasions of learning
- distribution channel — trade: retailer
- distributive lattice — (theory) A lattice for which the least upper bound (lub) and greatest lower bound (glb) operators distribute over one another so that a lub (b glb c) == (a lub c) glb (a lub b) and vice versa. ("lub" and "glb" are written in LateX as \sqcup and \sqcap).
- district of columbia — a federal area in the E United States, on the Potomac, coextensive with the federal capital, Washington. 69 sq. mi. (179 sq. km). Abbreviation: DC (for use with zip code), D.C.
- double-aspect theory — a monistic theory that holds that mind and body are not distinct substances but merely different aspects of a single substance
- drum and bugle corps — a marching band of drum players and buglers.
- duck-billed dinosaur — hadrosaur.
- duck-billed platypus — platypus.
- dun & bradstreet — an agency furnishing subscribers with information as to the financial standing and credit rating of businesses
- eat out of sb's hand — If you have someone eating out of your hand, they are completely under your control.
- electoral boundaries — the way that a country or area is divided for the purposes of voting in an election
- 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.
- fold-and-thrust belt — a linear or arcuate region of the earth's surface that has been subjected to severe folding and thrust faulting
- fontainebleau school — a group of artists, many of them Italian and Flemish, who worked on the decorations of the palace of Fontainebleau in the 16th century.
- general public virus — (software, legal) A pejorative name for some versions of the GNU project copyleft or General Public License (GPL), which requires that any tools or application programs incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same terms as GNU code. Thus it is alleged that the copyleft "infects" software generated with GNU tools, which may in turn infect other software that reuses any of its code.
- greatest lower bound — a lower bound that is greater than or equal to all the lower bounds of a given set: 1 is the greatest lower bound of the set consisting of 1, 2, 3. Abbreviation: glb.
- grievous bodily harm — law: serious injury
- how about something? — what is your wish, opinion, or information concerning something (or someone)?
- hudson's bay blanket — a woollen blanket with wide stripes
- 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
- indistinguishability — The state of being indistinguishable.
- information builders — Distributors of LEVEL5 OBJECT. Telephone +1 800 969 INFO.
- justifiable homicide — murder committed under extenuating circumstances
- keyboard video mouse — (hardware) (KVM) Used to describe a "KVM switch" that allows one keyboard, one video display and one mouse to be switched between two or more computers.
- labour-saving device — a machine, gadget, etc, that reduces (human) effort, hard work or labour
- lampbrush chromosome — a chromosome with looped projections resembling a brush
- land-office business — a lively, booming, expanding, or very profitable business.
- 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.
- love's labour's lost — a comedy (1594–95?) by Shakespeare.
- macias nguema biyogo — a former name of Bioko.
- magdeburg hemisphere — one of a pair of hemispherical cups from which air can be evacuated when they are placed together: used to demonstrate the force of air pressure.
- massachusetts ballot — a ballot on which the candidates, with their party designations, are listed alphabetically in columns under the office for which they were nominated.
- 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.
- miliary tuberculosis — tuberculosis in which the bacilli are spread by the blood from one point of infection, producing small tubercles in other parts of the body.
- moreton bay chestnut — an Australian leguminous tree, Castanospermum australe, having thin smooth bark and yellow or reddish flowers: used in furniture manufacture
- 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.
- nostalgie de la boue — a desire for or attraction to crudity, vulgarity, depravity, etc.
- obfuscated c contest — (programming) The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC) is an annual contest run since 1984 over Usenet by Landon Curt Noll and friends. The overall winner is whoever produces the most unreadable, creative, and bizarre (but working) C program. Various other prizes are awarded at the judges' whim. C's terse syntax and macro-preprocessor facilities give contestants a lot of maneuvering room. The winning programs often manage to be simultaneously funny, breathtaking works of art and horrible examples of how *not* to code in C. This relatively short and sweet hello, world program demonstrates obfuscated C: /* HELLO WORLD program * by Jack Applin and Robert Heckendorn, 1985 */ main(v,c)char**c;{for(v[c++]="Hello, world!\n)"; (!!c)[*c]&&(v--||--c&&execlp(*c,*c,c[!!c]+!!c,!c)); **c=!c)write(!!*c,*c,!!**c);} Here's another good one: /* Program to compute an approximation of pi * by Brian Westley, 1988 */ #define _ -F<00||--F-OO--; int F=00,OO=00; main(){F_OO();printf("%1.3f\n",4.*-F/OO/OO);}F_OO() { _-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_ } Note that this program works by computing its own area. For more digits, write a bigger program.
- particulate scrubber — A particulate scrubber is a scrubber in which a liquid is mixed with the gas to collect solids.
- pentobarbital sodium — a barbiturate drug used in medicine as a sedative and hypnotic. Formula: C11H17N2O3Na
- physical double star — two stars that appear as one if not viewed through a telescope with adequate magnification, such as two stars that are separated by a great distance but are nearly in line with each other and an observer (optical double star) or those that are relatively close together and comprise a single physical system (physical double star)
- pipeline burst cache — (hardware, storage) (PB Cache) A synchronous cache built from pipelined SRAM. A cache in which reading or writing a new location takes multiple cycles but subsequent locations can be accessed in a single cycle. On Pentium systems in 1996, pipeline burst caches are frequently used as secondary caches. The first 8 bytes of data are transferred in 3 CPU cycles, and the next 3 8-byte pieces of data are transferred in one cycle each.
- potassium bichromate — an orange-red, crystalline, water-soluble, poisonous powder, K 2 Cr 2 O 7 , used chiefly in dyeing, photography, and as a laboratory reagent.
- 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.
- potassium bitartrate — cream of tartar.