19-letter words containing s, e, n
- atmospheric braking — a technique of reentry in which the vehicle is maneuvered in the upper atmosphere so as to lose velocity by utilizing drag without overheating.
- attachment disorder — an emotional and behavioral disorder arising from a failure to form a strong bond with one’s primary caregiver in early childhood and affecting one’s social relationships in later childhood and adulthood. See also attachment (def 3a).
- attendance register — an official list of people who are present at an institution such as a school
- attractive nuisance — Law. a doctrine of tort law under which a person who creates or permits to exist on his or her land a dangerous condition attractive to children, as an unfenced swimming pool, is liable for their resulting injuries, even though the injured are trespassers.
- audio response unit — a device that enables a computer to give a spoken response by generating sounds similar to human speech.
- augsburg confession — the statement of beliefs and doctrines of the Lutherans, formulated by Melanchthon and endorsed by the Lutheran princes, which was presented at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 and which became the chief creed of the Lutheran Church.
- australian tea tree — a shrubby Australian tree, Leptospermum laevigatum, of the myrtle family, having lance-shaped leaves and white, bell-shaped flowers.
- author's alteration — a correction or change made in typeset copy that is not a correction of an error introduced by the compositor. Abbreviation: AA, A.A., a.a., aa.
- awareness programme — a programme designed to increase awareness of something
- axiomatic semantics — (theory) A set of assertions about properties of a system and how they are effected by program execution. The axiomatic semantics of a program could include pre- and post-conditions for operations. In particular if you view the program as a state transformer (or collection of state transformers), the axiomatic semantics is a set of invariants on the state which the state transformer satisfies. E.g. for a function with the type: sort_list :: [T] -> [T] we might give the precondition that the argument of the function is a list, and a postcondition that the return value is a list that is sorted. One interesting use of axiomatic semantics is to have a language that has a finitely computable sublanguage that is used for specifying pre and post conditions, and then have the compiler prove that the program will satisfy those conditions. See also operational semantics, denotational semantics.
- bachelor of science — A Bachelor of Science is a first degree in a science subject. In British English, it can also mean a person with that degree. The abbreviation BSc or , BSc is also used.
- bacillary dysentery — shigellosis.
- balance of payments — A country's balance of payments is the difference, over a period of time, between the payments it makes to other countries for imports and the payments it receives from other countries for exports.
- bandar seri begawan — the capital of Brunei. Pop: 64 000 (2005 est)
- bang for one's buck — value for money
- banker's acceptance — a draft or bill of exchange drawn on a bank and accepted by it
- batterie de cuisine — cooking utensils collectively; pots and pans, etc
- battle-ground state — a state of the U.S. in which the Democratic and Republican candidates both have a good chance of winning and that is considered key to the outcome of a presidential election: the swing states of Ohio and Indiana.
- battles of bull run — two battles fought at Manassas Junction near a stream named Bull Run, during the American Civil War (July, 1861 and August, 1862), in both of which the Federal army was routed by the Confederates
- be burnt to a crisp — If something is burnt to a crisp, it is completely burnt.
- be greek to someone — to be incomprehensible or unintelligible to someone
- be of use/be no use — If something or someone is of use, they are useful. If they are no use, they are not at all useful.
- be one's own master — If you say that you are your own master, you mean that your decisions are not controlled by other people and you are free to do what you want.
- be one's own person — a human being, whether an adult or child: The table seats four persons.
- be someone's junior — to be younger than someone
- be up to one's neck — the part of the body of an animal or human being that connects the head and the trunk.
- beat someone hollow — to defeat someone thoroughly and convincingly
- beauty preparations — the cosmetics, creams etc used to improve someone's beauty
- behavioral genetics — an interdisciplinary field studying the effects of genetics and hereditary factors on animal and human behavior.
- behavioural science — the application of scientific methods to the study of the behaviour of organisms
- behind closed doors — If people have talks and discussions behind closed doors, they have them in private because they want them to be kept secret.
- belgian east africa — a former Belgian trust territory in Africa, also (1924–62) Ruanda-Urundi, now the independent countries of Rwanda and Burundi.
- bellybutton surgery — laparoscopy.
- bend over backwards — to make a special effort, esp in order to please
- benedict's solution — a chemical solution used to detect the presence of glucose and other reducing sugars. Medically, it is used to test the urine of diabetics
- bernoulli's theorem — Statistics. law of averages (def 1).
- bernstein condition — (parallel) Processes cannot execute in parallel if one effects values used by the other. Nor can they execute in parallel if any subsequent process uses data effected by both, i.e. whose value might depend on the order of execution.
- beside the question — not related to the subject under discussion
- bicarbonate of soda — Bicarbonate of soda is a white powder which is used in baking to make cakes rise, and also as a medicine for your stomach.
- bloody-nosed beetle — a beetle, Timarcha tenebricosa, that exudes bright red blood when alarmed: family Chrysomelidae
- blot one's copybook — to spoil one's reputation by making a mistake, offending against social customs, etc
- blow one's own horn — If you blow your own horn, you boast about yourself.
- blow someone's mind — (of a drug, esp LSD) to alter someone's mental state
- blow the whistle on — to make a clear musical sound, a series of such sounds, or a high-pitched, warbling sound by the forcible expulsion of the breath through a small opening formed by contracting the lips, or through the teeth, with the aid of the tongue.
- blue screen of life — (operating system) (BSOL, by analogy with "Blue Screen of Death") The opening screen of Microsoft Windows NT. This screen shows the file system loading, and any problems such as conversions from FAT to NTFS or a scan of a hard drive. The Blue Screen of Life occurs in one way, as opposed to the Blue Screen of Death, which can occur in many different ways and times.
- blue-ringed octopus — a highly venomous octopus, Octopus maculosus, of E Australia which exhibits blue bands on its tentacles when disturbed
- booker t washington — Booker T(aliaferro) [boo k-er tol-uh-ver] /ˈbʊk ər ˈtɒl ə vər/ (Show IPA), 1856–1915, U.S. reformer, educator, author, and lecturer.
- bordering countries — countries that share a border with a particular country
- bracket abstraction — (compiler) An algorithm which turns a term into a function of some variable. The result of using bracket abstraction on T with respect to variable v, written as [v]T, is a term containing no occurrences of v and denoting a function f such that f v = T. This defines the function f = (\ v . T). Using bracket abstraction and currying we can define a language without bound variables in which the only operation is monadic function application. See combinator.
- brazen law of wages — the doctrine or theory that wages tend toward a level sufficient only to maintain a subsistence standard of living.