18-letter words containing a, c, k, t
- diamondback turtle — any edible North American terrapin of the genus Malaclemys, esp M. terrapin, occurring in brackish and tidal waters and having diamond-shaped markings on the shell: family Emydidae
- drinking chocolate — sweetened cocoa powder
- electronic banking — the transfer of money between financial institutions through an exchange of electronic signals over a network
- fall-back position — an alternative plan
- family-size packet — a packet large enough to be suitable for a family
- flat on one's back — lying supine
- get one's own back — of, relating to, or belonging to oneself or itself (usually used after a possessive to emphasize the idea of ownership, interest, or relation conveyed by the possessive): He spent only his own money.
- giant peacock moth — the largest European moth, an emperor, Saturnia pyri, reaching 15 cm (6 in.) in wingspan. It is mottled brown with a prominent ocellus on each wing and being night-flying can be mistaken for a bat
- go back to the mat — to abandon urban civilization
- great-circle track — the route of a ship following the arc of a great circle, appearing as a curved line on a Mercator chart and as a straight line on a gnomonic chart.
- handkerchief table — corner table.
- health care worker — A health care worker is someone who works in a hospital or health centre.
- heteroskedasticity — Alternative spelling of heteroscedasticity.
- impingement attack — a form of corrosion of metals caused by erosion of the oxide layer by a moving fluid in which there are suspended particles or air bubbles
- in black and white — without colour
- incremental backup — (operating system) A kind of backup that copies all files which have changed since the date of the previous backup. The first backup of a file system should include all files - a "full backup". Call this level 0. The next backup could also be a full level 0 backup but it is usually much quicker to do a level 1 backup which will include only those files which have changed since the level 0 backup. Together the level 0 and level 1 backups will include the latest version of every file. Level 1 backups can be made until, say, the backup tape is nearly full, after which we can switch to level 2. Each level includes those files which have changed since the last backup at a lower level. The more levels you use, the longer it will take to restore the latest version of a file (or all files) if you don't know when it was last modified. Compare differential backup.
- jack of all trades — a person who is adept at many different kinds of work.
- jack-in-the-pulpit — A North American plant, Arisaema triphyllum, of the arum family, having an upright spadix arched over by a green or striped purplish-brown spathe.
- jack-of-all-trades — a person who is adept at many different kinds of work.
- japanese artichoke — Chinese artichoke.
- keep at a distance — to be reserved or cool toward; treat aloofly
- kentucky bluegrass — a grass, Poa pratensis, of the Mississippi valley, used for pasturage and lawns.
- killer application — a highly innovative, very powerful, or extremely useful computer application; esp one sufficiently important as to justify purchase of the equipment or software
- king of the castle — most powerful figure
- kitchen-sink drama — a type of drama of the 1950s depicting the sordid aspects of domestic reality
- knotted cranesbill — a British wildflower, Geranium nodosum, an meadow geranium with bright pink or purple flowers
- labeled bracketing — a representation of the constituent structure of a string, as a word or sentence, comparable to a tree diagram, in which each constituent is shown in brackets and given a subscript grammatical label, with each bracketed item corresponding to a node in a tree diagram.
- lake pontchartrain — a shallow lagoon in SE Louisiana, linked with the Gulf of Mexico by a narrow channel, the Rigolets: resort and fishing centre. Area: 1620 sq km (625 sq miles)
- leatherback turtle — a sea turtle, Dermochelys coriacea, having the shell embedded in a leathery skin, reaching a length of more than 7 feet (2.1 meter) and a weight of more than 1000 pounds (450 kg): the largest living sea turtle; an endangered species.
- local area network — a system for linking private telecommunications equipment, as in a building or cluster of buildings.
- long-stay car park — a car park (eg at an airport) where cars can be left for a long time
- make a practice of — be in the habit of
- maksutov telescope — a reflecting telescope in which coma and spherical aberration are reduced to a minimum by a combination of a spherical mirror and a meniscus lens placed inside the radius of curvature of the mirror.
- marketing campaign — a series of coordinated activities designed to help market a product
- marketing research — the study of influences upon customer and consumer behaviour and the analysis of market characteristics and trends
- multicast backbone — (MBONE) A virtual network on top of the Internet which supports routing of IP multicast packets, intended for multimedia transmission. MBONE gives public access desktop video communications. The quality is poor with only 3-5 frames per second instead of the 30 frames per second of commercial television. Its advantage is that it avoids all telecommunications costs normally associated with teleconferencing. An interesting innovation is the use of MBONE for audio communications and an electronic "whiteboard" where the computer screen becomes a shared workspace where two physically remote parties can draw on and edit shared documents in real-time.
- nickel-and-dime it — to succeed or obtain something gradually by the repeated expenditure of small sums or the slow gathering of votes, power, money, etc. in small increments
- nike of samothrace — a Greek marble statue (c200 b.c.) of Nike found at Samothrace and now in the Louvre, Paris.
- north saskatchewan — a river in S central Canada, flowing E from the Rocky Mountains and joining the South Saskatchewan River to form the Saskatchewan River. 760 miles (1223 km) long.
- north truchas peak — a mountain in N New Mexico, near Santa Fe: one of the three Truchas Peaks. 13,110 feet (3999 meters).
- on a sticky wicket — in an awkward situation
- on the back burner — low priority
- optical disk drive — (hardware) (Or "optical disc drive", "optical storage") A generic term for any device that reads and/or writes optical media, i.e. compact discs, DVDs and/or Blu-ray discs or future media that uses light (from a small laser) to read data off a removable, rotating disk. At least one such drive is commonly installed in most personal computers to allow them to play and/or record audio and video media and load and store data such as program installers. The floppy disk has been replaced by optical media due to its vastly greater capacity, e.g. 50,000 megabytes for a dual-layer blu-ray disc compared with 1.5 megabytes for a floppy (over 30,000 times as much).
- optical soundtrack — the final soundtrack on a motion picture, which appears as a band of black and white serrations along a strip of film to the left of the composite print. Light is shined through the serrations and is converted to audible sound.
- oriental cockroach — a dark-brown cockroach, Blatta orientalis, thought to have originated in Asia but now nearly cosmopolitan in distribution.
- packet switch node — (PSN) A dedicated computer whose purpose is to accept, route and forward packets in a packet-switched network.
- people trafficking — the practice of bringing immigrants into a country illegally
- percentile ranking — the percentage of scores that a particular score is greater than
- peter tschaikowsky — Peter Ilyich [il-yich] /ˈɪl yɪtʃ/ (Show IPA), Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilyich.
- put the clock back — to regress