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21-letter words containing a, c, i

  • baja california norte — a state of NW Mexico, in the N part of the Lower California peninsula. Capital: Mexicali. Pop: 2 487 700 (2000). Area: about 71 500 sq km (27 600 sq miles)
  • 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.
  • barren ground caribou — a migrating caribou of the North American tundra and taiga, having many-branched slender antlers.
  • barrier contraceptive — any form of contraceptive that prevents impregnation by physically preventing the sperm from reaching the egg
  • basis of articulation — a configuration of the speech tract that represents the most neutral articulatory configuration for a given language.
  • baudouin de courtenay — Jan Ignacy Niecisław [yahn ig-nah-tsi nye-tsis-lahf] /yɑn ɪgˈnɑ tsɪ ˈnyɛ tsɪsˌlɑf/ (Show IPA), 1845–1929, Polish linguist: pioneer in modern phonology.
  • be in black and white — You say that something is in black and white when it has been written or printed, and not just said.
  • behavior modification — a technique that seeks to modify animal and human behavior through application of the principles of conditioning, in which rewards and reinforcements, or punishments, are used to establish desired habits, or patterns of behavior
  • behavioural contagion — the spread of a particular type of behaviour, such as crying, through a crowd or group of people
  • behind someone's back — without someone's knowledge or consent
  • benzalkonium chloride — a white or yellowish-white, water-soluble mixture of ammonium chloride derivatives having the structure C 8 H 10 NRCl, where R is a mixture of radicals ranging from C 8 H 17 – to C 18 H 37 –, that occurs as an amorphous powder or in gelatinous lumps: used chiefly as an antiseptic and a disinfectant.
  • beta-naphthyl radical — Also called alpha-naphthyl group, alpha-naphthyl radical. the univalent group C 1 0 H 7 –, having a replaceable hydrogen atom in the first, or alpha, position; 1-naphthyl group.
  • bibliographic control — the identification, description, analysis, and classification of books and other materials of communication so that they may be effectively organized, stored, retrieved, and used when needed.
  • bibliographic utility — an organization that maintains computerized bibliographic records and offers to its members or customers various products and services related to these records.
  • bicameral legislature — two-chamber lawmaking system
  • binomial nomenclature — a system for naming plants and animals by means of two Latin names: the first indicating the genus and the second the species to which the organism belongs, as in Panthera leo (the lion)
  • biobehavioral science — any of the various branches of the life sciences, as neurobiology, neurochemistry, or neuroendocrinology, that deal with biological aspects of behavior.
  • biological psychiatry — a school of psychiatric thought concerned with the medical treatment of mental disorders, especially through medication, and emphasizing the relationship between behavior and brain function and the search for physical causes of mental illness.
  • black-and-tan terrier — Manchester terrier
  • black-headed fireworm — the larva of any of several moths, as Rhopobota naevana (black-headed fireworm) which feeds on the leaves of cranberries and causes them to wither.
  • blackburn with darwen — a unitary authority in NW England, in Lancashire. Pop: 139 800 (2003 est). Area: 137 sq km (53 sq miles)
  • boiling-water reactor — a nuclear reactor using water as coolant and moderator, steam being produced in the reactor itself: enriched uranium oxide cased in zirconium is the fuel
  • bonnie prince charlie — a member of the royal family that ruled in Scotland from 1371 to 1714 and in England from 1603 to 1714.
  • box-office attraction — something or something that persuades people to buy tickets for a film or play
  • brazilian firecracker — a tropical American twining plant, Manettia inflata, of the madder family, having opposite, lance-shaped leaves and a red, tubular flower with yellow tips, grown in the southern U.S. as a trellis plant.
  • breath-of-life packet — (XEROX PARC) An Ethernet packet that contains bootstrap code, periodically sent out from a working computer to infuse the "breath of life" into any computer on the network that has crashed. Computers depending on such packets have sufficient hardware or firmware code to wait for (or request) such a packet during the reboot process. See also dickless workstation. The notional "kiss-of-death packet", with a function complementary to that of a breath-of-life packet, is recommended for dealing with hosts that consume too many network resources. Though "kiss-of-death packet" is usually used in jest, there is at least one documented instance of an Internet subnet with limited address-table slots in a gateway computer in which such packets were routinely used to compete for slots, rather like Christmas shoppers competing for scarce parking spaces.
  • british north america — (formerly) Canada or its constituent regions or provinces that formed part of the British Empire
  • burroughs corporation — (company)   A company which merged with Sperry Univac to form Unisys Corporation. They produced the Datatron 200 series among other computers.
  • cancellation deadline — A cancellation deadline is a date before which you must cancel a hotel reservation without paying any money.
  • canticle of canticles — another name for the Song of Solomon, used in the Douay Bible
  • cantilever foundation — a building foundation supporting its load partly or wholly upon cantilevers.
  • caroline of brunswick — 1768–1821, wife of George IV of the United Kingdom: tried for adultery (1820)
  • carrie chapman l catt — Carrie Chapman Lane, 1859–1947, U.S. leader in women's suffrage movements.
  • 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.
  • cat on a hot tin roof — a play (1955) by Tennessee Williams.
  • catalyst-to-oil ratio — The catalyst-to-oil ratio is the amount of a catalyst relative to the amount of oil, which with temperature affects the yield of a process.
  • 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.
  • catherine of braganza — 1638–1705, wife of Charles II of England, daughter of John IV of Portugal
  • 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.
  • caviar to the general — a thing appealing only to a highly cultivated taste: Hamlet II, ii
  • central daylight time — the time observed in the Central Time Zone of the United states when Daylight Savings Time is in effect; GMT -5
  • central european time — the standard time adopted by Western European countries one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, corresponding to British Summer Time
  • central limit theorem — any of several theorems stating that the sum of a number of random variables obeying certain conditions will assume a normal distribution as the number of variables becomes large.
  • 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
  • certificate authority — (cryptography, body)   (CA or "Trusted Third Party") An entity (typically a company) that issues digital certificates to other entities (organisations or individuals) to allow them to prove their identity to others. A Certificate Authority might be an external company such as VeriSign that offers digital certificate services or they might be an internal organisation such as a corporate MIS department. The Certificate Authority's chief function is to verify the identity of entities and issue digital certificates attesting to that identity. The process uses public key cryptography to create a "network of trust". If I want to prove my identity to you, I ask a CA (who you trust to have verified my identity) to encrypt a hash of my signed key with their private key. Then you can use the CA's public key to decrypt the hash and compare it with a hash you calculate yourself. Hashes are used to decrease the amount of data that needs to be transmitted. The hash function must be cryptographically strong, e.g. MD5.
  • certificate of origin — a document stating the name of the country that produced a specified shipment of goods: often required before importation of goods
  • character recognition — Character recognition is a process which allows computers to recognize written or printed characters such as numbers or letters and to change them into a form that the computer can use.
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