21-letter words containing t, a, i, n, s
- atmospheric inversion — inversion (def 12).
- atmospheric-inversion — an act or instance of inverting.
- atomic disintegration — a process resulting in the change of a radioactive nucleus, either by emission of an alpha, beta, or gamma ray or by fission, and producing a change in the original mass, atomic number, or energy
- augustin jean fresnel — Augustin Jean, 1788–1827, French physicist.
- australian cattle dog — a compact strongly-built dog of a breed with pricked ears and a smooth bluish-grey coat, often used for controlling and moving cattle
- aversive conditioning — a type of behavior conditioning in which noxious stimuli are associated with undesirable or unwanted behavior that is to be modified or abolished, as the use of nausea-inducing drugs in the treatment of alcoholism.
- bad conduct discharge — a discharge of a person from military service for an offense less serious than one for which a dishonorable discharge is given.
- ball-and-socket joint — a coupling between two rods, tubes, etc, that consists of a spherical part fitting into a spherical socket, allowing free movement within a specific conical volume
- banach-tarski paradox — (mathematics) It is possible to cut a solid ball into finitely many pieces (actually about half a dozen), and then put the pieces together again to get two solid balls, each the same size as the original. This paradox is a consequence of the Axiom of Choice.
- barbiturate poisoning — poisoning caused by overdose of a barbiturate
- basis of articulation — a configuration of the speech tract that represents the most neutral articulatory configuration for a given language.
- be at pains to do sth — If someone is at pains to do something, they are very eager and anxious to do it, especially because they want to avoid a difficult situation.
- be on the danger list — to be critically ill in hospital
- beat one's brains out — Anatomy, Zoology. the part of the central nervous system enclosed in the cranium of humans and other vertebrates, consisting of a soft, convoluted mass of gray and white matter and serving to control and coordinate the mental and physical actions.
- beyond (all) question — beyond (any) dispute or doubt
- binding-time analysis — (compiler) An analysis to identify sub-expressions which can be evaluated at compile-time or where versions of a function can be generated and called which are specialised to certain values of one or more arguments. See partial evaluation.
- binomial distribution — a statistical distribution giving the probability of obtaining a specified number of successes in a specified number of independent trials of an experiment with a constant probability of success in each. Symbol: Bi (n, p), where n is the number of trials and p the probability of success in each
- blow one's brains out — to kill oneself by shooting oneself in the head
- brainstorming session — a meeting held for the purpose of intensive discussion to solve problems or generate ideas
- british anti-lewisite — a colorless, oily, viscous liquid, C 3 H 8 OS 2 , originally developed as an antidote to lewisite and now used in treating bismuth, gold, mercury, and arsenic poisoning.
- british north america — (formerly) Canada or its constituent regions or provinces that formed part of the British Empire
- british sign language — the main sign language used by deaf people in the United Kingdom
- british standard time — the standard time used in Britain all the year round from 1968 to 1971, set one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time and equalling Central European Time
- bulletin board system — (communications, application) (BBS, bboard /bee'bord/, message board, forum; plural: BBSes) A computer and associated software which typically provides an electronic message database where people can log in and leave messages. Messages are typically split into topic groups similar to the newsgroups on Usenet (which is like a distributed BBS). Any user may submit or read any message in these public areas. The term comes from physical pieces of board on which people can pin messages written on paper for general consumption - a "physical bulletin board". Ward Christensen, the programmer and operator of the first BBS (on-line 1978-02-16) called it a CBBS for "computer bulletin board system". Since the rise of the World-Wide Web, the term has become antiquated, though the concept is more popular than ever, with many websites featuring discussion areas where users can post messages for public consumption. Apart from public message areas, some BBSes provided archives of files, personal electronic mail and other services of interest to the system operator (sysop). Thousands of BBSes around the world were run from amateurs' homes on MS-DOS boxes with a single modem line each. Although BBSes were traditionally the domain of hobbyists, many connected directly to the Internet (accessed via telnet), others were operated by government, educational, and research institutions. Fans of Usenet or the big commercial time-sharing bboards such as CompuServe, CIX and GEnie tended to consider local BBSes the low-rent district of the hacker culture, but they helped connect hackers and users in the personal-micro and let them exchange code. Use of this term for a Usenet newsgroup generally marks one either as a newbie fresh in from the BBS world or as a real old-timer predating Usenet.
- burroughs corporation — (company) A company which merged with Sperry Univac to form Unisys Corporation. They produced the Datatron 200 series among other computers.
- bursting at the seams — If a place is very full, you can say that it is bursting at the seams.
- canticle of canticles — another name for the Song of Solomon, used in the Douay Bible
- cartesian coordinates — a system of representing points in space in terms of their distance from a given origin measured along a set of mutually perpendicular axes. Written (x,y,z) with reference to three axes
- cascading style sheet — a file recording style details, such as fonts, colours, etc, that is read by browsers so that style is consistent over multiple web pages
- casing collar locator — A casing collar locator is a tool that is placed down the borehole to allow depths to be measured by detecting the position of the casing collar.
- category merchandiser — A category merchandiser is a person whose job is to maintain stocks, manage displays and promote sales of a certain product category such as footwear.
- cause-effect graphing — (programming) A testing technique that aids in selecting, in a systematic way, a high-yield set of test cases that logically relates causes to effects to produce test cases. It has a beneficial side effect in pointing out incompleteness and ambiguities in specifications.
- central standard time — one of the standard times used in North America, based on the local time of the 90° meridian, six hours behind Greenwich Mean Time
- charity commissioners — (in Britain) members of a commission constituted to keep a register of charities and control charitable trusts
- cheese and wine party — a party at which cheese and wine are served
- chief master sergeant — a solider of the highest enlisted rank in the US Air Force
- chinese lantern plant — winter cherry (def 1).
- chinese water torture — a form of torture in which water is made to drip for a long period of time onto a victim's forehead to drive him insane
- chinese-lantern plant — a perennial ground-cherry (Physalis alkekengi) grown for winter bouquets because of the bladderlike red calyx that surrounds its small, tomatolike fruit
- christmas decorations — decorations of different kinds appropriate to Christmas, such as tinsel, candles, images of angels, etc.
- class-relation method — (programming) A design technique based on the concepts of object-oriented programming and the Entity-Relationship model from the French company Softeam.
- clayton antitrust act — an act of Congress in 1914 supplementing the Sherman Antitrust Act and establishing the FTC.
- clinical psychologist — a practitioner of clinical psychology
- collins street farmer — a businessman who invests in farms, land, etc
- comfortably-furnished — containing comfortable furniture
- commercial television — television companies which make money by selling advertising
- commercial translator — (language) An English-like pre-COBOL language for business data processing.
- committal proceedings — a preliminary hearing in a magistrates' court to decide if there is a case to answer
- committing magistrate — a magistrate who decides if there is enough evidence for a case to proceed
- communication science — the study of ways in which human beings communicate, including speech, gesture, telecommunication systems, publishing and broadcasting media, etc