FBI

1. 1
   proper nounUSinitialism

   Initialism of Federal Bureau of Investigation.

   The FBI opened an investigation into the company's finances.

   After college, she applied to become an FBI agent.

   Note

   Spoken letter by letter, this initialism behaves like a name that needs its article: people work in the FBI, and the FBI publishes crime reports. Before another noun it drops the article and turns attributive, as in an FBI agent. The organization it names has a double role: it is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and also its primary federal law enforcement organization.

2. 2
   nounhumorousUS

   A humorous reinterpretation of FBI as 'female body inspector,' used jokingly of a man who enjoys looking at women's bodies.

   At the reunion, Gary introduced himself as FBI and waited, grinning, for someone to ask what he meant.

   The souvenir shop sells FBI caps that make tourists snicker once they read the fine print.

   Note

   A backronym: the letters of the federal agency are refilled with a joke, and the gag works only because the reader expects the bureau. Its natural home is the slogan T-shirt. Jeffery Self's Straight People (2013) places it among the novelty shirts sold in Daytona Beach. Treat it as a punchline rather than a working noun, since many listeners find it juvenile or mildly sexist.

3. 3
   proper nounBritish

   The Federation of British Industry, an employers' organization that represented British business from 1916 to 1965 and was a forerunner of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).

   Throughout the 1950s, the FBI pressed Whitehall for policies favorable to manufacturers.

   Her grandfather attended FBI conferences as a delegate for the steel industry.

   Note

   A British name that shares its three letters with the American bureau, so context has to do the sorting. In mid-century British writing on industry and business, FBI usually means the employers' Federation, not the agency. Its successor kept the same pattern of naming, swapping Federation for Confederation, which is why CBI reads to British ears as the natural sequel to FBI.

4. 4
   proper nounAustralia

   A fire behavior index, a numerical rating of how intensely and how quickly a wildfire is likely to burn and spread under current weather and fuel conditions.

   Authorities raised the warning level after the FBI climbed into the extreme range.

   Forecasters expect the FBI to peak in the afternoon as winds strengthen and humidity drops.

   Note

   An Australian fire-weather term from forecasting and fire management. The index combines temperature, humidity, wind speed and fuel dryness into a single figure, so it moves through the day as conditions change, often peaking in the afternoon. Outside an Australian fire context, most readers will take the letters for the US investigative bureau, so spell the index out on first mention.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A fixed-bit index, an index used in computing whose entries are each stored in the same fixed number of bits.

   The database stores its keys in an FBI so that any entry can be located by simple arithmetic.

   Developers chose an FBI over a variable-length structure to keep lookup times predictable.

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