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19-letter words containing a, b, f

  • department of labor — the department of the U.S. federal government that promotes and improves the welfare, opportunities, and working conditions of wage earners. Abbreviation: DOL.
  • dependable software — software reliability
  • developable surface — a surface that can be flattened onto a plane without stretching or compressing any part of it, as a circular cone.
  • differential backup — (operating system)   A kind of backup that copies all files that have changed since the last full backup. Each differential backup will include all files in previous differential backups since the full backup so to restore a version of a file, you only need to search the full backup and the relevant differential backup. Some systems support differential backup by associating an "Archive" flag with each file and setting this flag whenever the file is modified to indicate that it should be included in the next backup. A differential backup does not change this flag, whereas an incremental backup resets it.
  • disablement benefit — (in Britain) a noncontributory benefit payable to a person disabled through injury or disease caused by their work
  • effervescent tablet — Effervescent tablets break down quickly when they are dropped into water or another liquid.
  • essence of bergamot — a fragrant essential oil from the fruit rind of this plant, used in perfumery and some teas (including Earl Grey)
  • fahd ibn abdul aziz — 1923–2005, king of Saudi Arabia (1982–2005)
  • fall by the wayside — to cease or fail to continue doing something
  • fault-based testing — (testing)   Software testing using test data designed to demonstrate the absence of a set of pre-specified faults; typically, frequently occurring faults. For example, to demonstrate that the software handles or avoids divide by zero correctly, the test data would include zero.
  • february revolution — Russian Revolution (def 1).
  • february-revolution — Also called February Revolution. the uprising in Russia in March, 1917 (February Old Style), in which the Czarist government collapsed and a provisional government was established.
  • feel strongly about — to have decided opinions concerning
  • few and far between — not many but more than one: Few artists live luxuriously.
  • financial ombudsman — any of five British ombudsmen: the Banking Ombudsman, set up in 1986 to investigate complaints from bank customers; the Building Society Ombudsman, set up in 1987 to investigate complaints from building society customers; the Insurance Ombudsman, set up in 1981 to investigate complaints by policyholders (since 1988 this ombudsman has also operated a Unit Trust Ombudsman scheme); the Investment Ombudsman set up in 1989 to investigate complaints by investors (the Personal Investment Authority Ombudsman is responsible for investigating complaints by personal investors); and the Pensions Ombudsman, set up in 1993 to investigate complaints regarding pension schemes
  • florida velvet bean — a tropical vine, Mucuna deeringiana, of the legume family, having showy, purple flowers in drooping clusters and black, hairy pods: grown as an ornamental.
  • flowering raspberry — a shrub, Rubus ordoratus, of eastern North America, having loose clusters of showy purplish or rose-purple flowers and inedible, dry, red fruit.
  • for all sb is worth — If you do something for all you are worth, you do it with a lot of energy and enthusiasm.
  • foundation subjects — the subjects studied as part of the National Curriculum, including the compulsory core subjects
  • freeze-frame button — a control button on a remote control device, used to stop a moving image to view it as a still
  • front-fastening bra — a bra which is fastened together at the front of the body
  • functional database — (database, language)   A database which uses a functional language as its query language. Databases would seem to be an inappropriate application for functional languages since, a purely functional language would have to return a new copy of the entire database every time (part of) it was updated. To be practically scalable, the update mechanism must clearly be destructive rather than functional; however it is quite feasible for the query language to be purely functional so long as the database is considered as an argument. One approach to the update problem would use a monad to encapsulate database access and ensure it was single threaded. Alternative approaches have been suggested by Trinder, who suggests non-destructive updating with shared data structures, and Sutton who uses a variant of a Phil Wadler's linear type system. There are two main classes of functional database languages. The first is based upon Backus' FP language, of which FQL is probably the best known example. Adaplan is a more recent language which falls into this category. More recently, people have been working on languages which are syntactically very similar to modern functional programming languages, but which also provide all of the features of a database language, e.g. bulk data structures which can be incrementally updated, type systems which can be incrementally updated, and all data persisting in a database. Examples are PFL [Poulovassilis&Small, VLDB-91], and Machiavelli [Ohori et al, ACM SIGMOD Conference, 1998].
  • gentile da fabriano — 1370?–1427, Italian painter.
  • good (or bad) form — conduct in (or not in) accord with social custom
  • harbinger-of-spring — a North American umbelliferous herb, Erigenia bulbosa, having white flowers that bloom early in the spring.
  • heat of sublimation — the heat absorbed by one gram or unit mass of a substance in the process of changing, at a constant temperature and pressure, from a solid to a gaseous state. Compare sublime (def 10).
  • hildegard of bingen — Hildegard von (Hildegard of Bingen"Sibyl of the Rhine") 1098–1178, German nun, healer, writer, and composer.
  • information algebra — Theoretical formalism for DP, never resulted in a language. Language Structure Group of CODASYL, ca. 1962. Sammet 1969, 709.
  • isle of shoals boat — a sailing boat formerly used in Ipswich Bay, Massachusetts, rigged with two spritsails or gaff sails.
  • isthmus of san blas — the narrowest part of the Isthmus of Panama. Width: about 50 km (30 miles)
  • judgment by default — a judgment in the plaintiff's favour when the defendant fails to plead or to appear
  • library of congress — one of the major library collections in the world, located in Washington, D.C., and functioning in some ways as the national library of the U.S. although not officially designated as such: established by Congress in 1800 for service to its members, but now also serving government agencies, other libraries, and the public.
  • line-of-battle ship — ship of the line.
  • load-bearing printf — (programming, humour)   The kind of bug present in a program which works correctly when producing debug output but fails when the debugging is turned off. The expression combines load-bearing wall and printf as used in debugging by printf.
  • make the best of it — cope
  • minimum iron fabric — cloth used to make clothes that require little ironing
  • municipal bond fund — a mutual fund that invests in municipal bonds.
  • negation by failure — An extralogical feature of Prolog and other logic programming languages in which failure of unification is treated as establishing the negation of a relation. For example, if Ronald Reagan is not in our database and we asked if he was an American, Prolog would answer "no".
  • non-transferability — to convey or remove from one place, person, etc., to another: He transferred the package from one hand to the other.
  • objectfuscated code — (humour, programming)   Object-oriented code which has been abstracted to so many levels that no-one can understand it anymore. A play on obfuscated code.
  • office-block ballot — a ballot on which the candidates are listed alphabetically, with or without their party designations, in columns under the office for which they were nominated.
  • on someone's behalf — in / on behalf of, as a representative of or a proxy for: On behalf of my colleagues, I address you tonight.
  • own flesh and blood — If you say that someone is your own flesh and blood, you are emphasizing that they are a member of your family.
  • pancreatic fibrosis — cystic fibrosis.
  • papal infallibility — the dogma that the pope cannot err in a solemn teaching addressed to the whole church on a matter of faith or morals.
  • paschen-back effect — a splitting of spectral lines observed when the source of a radiation is subjected to a strong magnetic field, caused when the vectors associated with the spin and orbital angular momentum exhibit individual rather than common precession.
  • perfoliate bellwort — a slender plant, Uvularia perfoliata, of the lily family, of eastern North America, having pale yellow, bell-shaped flowers.
  • potassium bisulfate — a colorless, crystalline, water-soluble solid, KHSO 4 , used chiefly in the conversion of tartrates to bitartrates.
  • profitability study — a study of how much profit a company, organization, etc, makes or how profitable it is
  • put on the feed bag — Also called nose bag. a bag for feeding horses, placed before the mouth and fastened around the head with straps.
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