22-letter words containing u
- bell-bottomed trousers — a pair of trousers with legs widening at the bottom
- benoit de sainte-maure — 12th-century French trouvère: author of the Roman de Troie, which contains the episode of Troilus and Cressida
- bereavement counsellor — a person giving advice to bereaved people to help them cope with their grief
- bernoulli distribution — binomial distribution.
- bernoulli's lemniscate — Analytic Geometry. lemniscate.
- better business bureau — any of a nationwide system of local organizations, supported by business, whose function is to receive and investigate customer complaints of dishonest business practices. Abbreviation: BBB.
- black hole of calcutta — a small dungeon in which in 1756 the Nawab of Bengal reputedly confined 146 English prisoners, of whom only 23 survived
- black mercuric sulfide — a crystalline, water-insoluble, poisonous compound, HgS, occurring as a coarse, black powder (black mercuric sulfide) or as a fine, bright-scarlet powder (red mercuric sulfide) used chiefly as a pigment and as a source of the free metal.
- black-scholes equation — a partial differential equation used to estimate the changing value of an option over time
- block redundancy check — Longitudinal Redundancy Check
- blow one's own trumpet — to boast of one's own skills or good qualities
- blue-winged kookaburra — a related smaller bird D. Leachii, of tropical Australia and New Guinea
- borel-lebesgue theorem — Heine-Borel theorem.
- born in/out of wedlock — If a baby is born in wedlock, it is born while its parents are married. If it is born out of wedlock, it is born at a time when its parents are not married.
- boundary value problem — any of a series of problems occurring in the solution of a differential equation with boundary conditions.
- bread-and-butter model — Naval Architecture. a wooden hull model carved from a number of horizontal planks glued together to represent the outlines of the various decks.
- bridge of san luis rey — a novel (1927) by Thornton Wilder.
- bring down the curtain — If something brings down the curtain on an event or situation, it causes or marks the end of it.
- bristle-thighed curlew — an Alaskan curlew, Numenius tahitiensis, that winters in Polynesia, having bristlelike feathers on its thighs.
- brush-footed butterfly — any of several butterflies of the family Nymphalidae, including the fritillaries, mourning cloaks, anglewings, and commas, characterized by reduced, nonfunctional forelegs.
- buffered write-through — (memory management) A variation of write-through where the cache uses a "write buffer" to hold data being written back to main memory. This frees the cache to service read requests while the write is taking place. There is usually only one stage of buffering so subsequent writes must wait until the first is complete. Most accesses are reads so buffered write-through is only useful for very slow main memory.
- bug-for-bug compatible — Same as bug-compatible, with the additional implication that much tedious effort went into ensuring that each (known) bug was replicated.
- business reply service — a service involving reply-paid envelopes
- calculus of variations — a branch of calculus concerned with maxima and minima of definite integrals
- carboxymethylcellulose — a white, water-soluble polymer derived from cellulose, used as a coating and sizing for paper and textiles, a stabilizer for various foods, and an appetite suppressor.
- cargo cult programming — (programming, humour) A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. A cargo cult programmer will usually explain the extra code as a way of working around some bug encountered in the past, but usually neither the bug nor the reason the code apparently avoided the bug was ever fully understood (compare shotgun debugging, voodoo programming). The term "cargo cult" is a reference to aboriginal religions that grew up in the South Pacific after World War II. The practices of these cults centre on building elaborate mockups of aeroplanes and military style landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of the god-like aeroplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war. Hackish usage probably derives from Richard Feynman's characterisation of certain practices as "cargo cult science" in his book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" (W. W. Norton & Co, New York 1985, ISBN 0-393-01921-7).
- carpal tunnel syndrome — a condition characterized by pain and tingling in the fingers, caused by pressure on a nerve as it passes under the ligament situated across the front of the wrist
- catch/take sb unawares — If something catches you unawares or takes you unawares, it happens when you are not expecting it.
- catoctin mountain park — a federal park in N central Maryland: site of Camp David. 9 sq. mi. (23 sq. km).
- cavity wall insulation — insulation injected into the space between cavity walls
- cell-mediated immunity — immunity independent of antibody but dependent on the recognition of antigen by T cells and their subsequent destruction of cells bearing the antigen or on the secretion by T cells of lymphokines that enhance the ability of phagocytes to eliminate the antigen.
- central nervous system — Your central nervous system is the part of your nervous system that consists of the brain and spinal cord.
- chebyshev's inequality — the fundamental theorem that the probability that a random variable differs from its mean by more than k standard deviations is less than or equal to 1/k2
- checkout test language — (language) (CTL)
- chinese army technique — Mongolian Hordes technique
- chinese water chestnut — a Chinese cyperaceous plant, Eleocharis tuberosa, with an edible succulent corm
- chip on one's shoulder — an inclination to fight or quarrel
- chlorotrifluoromethane — a colorless gas, CClF 3 , used chiefly as a refrigerant, in the hardening of metals, and in pharmaceutical processing.
- church of the brethren — the official name of the church of the Dunkers.
- cognitive architecture — (architecture) A computer architecure involving non-deterministic, multiple inference processes, as found in neural networks. Cognitive architectures model the human brain and contrast with single processor computers. The term might also refer to software architectures, e.g. fuzzy logic.
- coiled tubing drilling — Coiled tubing drilling is drilling using a narrow (1.75 to 3.5in) seamless tube of high-grade steel, wound onto a reel.
- collateral circulation — circulation of blood through a network of minor vessels that become enlarged and joined with adjacent vessels when a major vein or artery is impaired, as by obstruction.
- collective unconscious — In psychology, the collective unconscious consists of the basic ideas and images that all people are believed to share because they have inherited them.
- come out of the closet — If someone comes out of the closet, they tell people that they are homosexual after having kept this a secret.
- come up with the goods — If you deliver the goods or come up with the goods, you do what is expected or required of you.
- comma separated values — (file format) (CSV) A file format used as a portable representation of a database. Each line is one entry or record and the fields in a record are separated by commas. Commas may be followed by arbitrary space and/or tab characters which are ignored. If field includes a comma, the whole field must be surrounded with double quotes.
- common situs picketing — the picketing of an entire construction project by a union having a dispute with only one subcontractor working at the site.
- common snapping turtle — a large aggressive North American river turtle, Chelydra serpentina, having powerful hooked jaws and a rough shell
- common-situs picketing — the picketing of an entire construction site by a union striking against a particular contractor or subcontractor working on only one section
- communication channels — the ways in which people communicate