19-letter words containing n, i, s, a
- 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 fan palm — a fan palm, Livistona australis, of Australia, having a slender, reddish-brown trunk, spiny leafstalks, and round fruit.
- australian tea tree — a shrubby Australian tree, Leptospermum laevigatum, of the myrtle family, having lance-shaped leaves and white, bell-shaped flowers.
- austro-prussian war — the war (1866) in which Prussia, Italy, and some minor German states opposed Austria, Saxony, Hanover, and the states of southern Germany.
- 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.
- autotransplantation — autograft.
- 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.
- baja california sur — a state of NW Mexico, in the S part of the Lower California peninsula. Capital: La Paz. Pop: 423 516 (2000). Area: 73 475 sq km (28 363 sq miles)
- balloon angioplasty — angioplasty in which a balloon catheter is moved to a blocked area of a blood vessel where the balloon is inflated to expand or force open the vessel
- ballot-box stuffing — the act of illegally submitting more than one vote in a ballot in which only one vote is permitted
- bandar seri begawan — the capital of Brunei. Pop: 64 000 (2005 est)
- bargaining position — the position of a person, group, or organization in a negotiation, with respect to their ability to achieve a deal which is favourable to themselves
- batterie de cuisine — cooking utensils collectively; pots and pans, etc
- be burnt to a crisp — If something is burnt to a crisp, it is completely burnt.
- 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
- belgian east africa — a former Belgian trust territory in Africa, also (1924–62) Ruanda-Urundi, now the independent countries of Rwanda and Burundi.
- 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.
- binocular disparity — the small differences in the positions of the parts of the images falling on each eye that results when each eye views the scene from a slightly different position; these differences make stereoscopic vision possible
- 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.
- boundary commission — (in Britain) a body established by statute to undertake periodic reviews of the boundaries of parliamentary constituencies and to recommend changes to take account of population shifts
- 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.
- breathing apparatus — an apparatus, usually consisting of tanks of air or oxygen and a mouthpiece, that enables the wearer to breath in difficult conditions such as a smoke-filled building
- briggsian logarithm — common logarithm.
- bug tracking system — (programming) (BTS) A system for receiving and filing bugs reported against a software project, and tracking those bugs until they are fixed. Most major software projects have their own BTS, the source code of which is often available for use by other projects. Well known BTSs include GNATS, Bugzilla, and Debbugs.
- buildings insurance — insurance which covers buildings
- business accounting — the keeping of detailed accounts relating to a business or businesses
- cairngorm mountains — a mountain range of NE Scotland: part of the Grampians. Highest peak: Ben Macdui, 1309 m (4296 ft); designated a national park in 2003
- california job case — a job case having sufficient spaces to contain both uppercase and lowercase letters and 37 additional characters of foundry type. Compare case2 (def 8).
- california sea lion — any of several large eared seals, as Eumetopias jubatus (Steller's sea lion) of the northern Pacific, and Zalophus californicus (California sea lion) of the Pacific coast of North America.
- canterbury pilgrims — the pilgrims whose stories are told in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
- cape york peninsula — large peninsula in NE Australia, part of Queensland, between the Gulf of Carpentaria & the Coral Sea
- cape-disappointment — Cape, a cape in SW Washington state, projecting into the Pacific Ocean on the N of the mouth of the Columbia River.
- captain abstraction — The champion of the principles of abstraction and modularity, who protects unwary students on MIT's course 6.001 from the nefarious designs of Sergeant Spaghetticode and his vile concrete programming practices. See also spaghetti code.
- captain of industry — You can refer to the owners or senior managers of industrial companies as captains of industry.
- captains courageous — a novel (1897) by Rudyard Kipling.
- carbon dioxide snow — solid carbon dioxide, used as a refrigerant
- carbon steel piping — Carbon steel piping is pipes made of steel with carbon as the main alloying component, used for transporting fluids.
- cardbox for windows — (database) A database handling program, especially useful for scholars and librarians.
- caroline of ansbach — 1683–1737, wife of George II of Great Britain
- cash in one's chips — to turn in one's chips for their equivalent in money
- cask of amontillado — a short story (1846) by Edgar Allan Poe.
- cast one's lot with — one of a set of objects, as straws or pebbles, drawn or thrown from a container to decide a question or choice by chance.
- catch sb in the act — If you catch someone in the act, you discover them doing something wrong or committing a crime.