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20-letter words containing a, c, r, o

  • antimony oxychloride — a white, water-insoluble powder, SbOCl, used chiefly in the manufacture of antimony salts.
  • antony and cleopatra — a tragedy (1606–07?) by Shakespeare.
  • aortic insufficiency — abnormal closure of the aortic valve resulting in regurgitation of blood to the left ventricle.
  • apothecaries' weight — a system of weights, formerly used in pharmacy, based on the Troy ounce, which contains 480 grains. 1 grain is equal to 0.065 gram
  • apparent candlepower — a measure of the luminous intensity of an extended source of light in terms of the candlepower of a point source of light that has an equivalent luminous intensity when placed at the same distance as the extended source.
  • apple computer, inc. — (company)   Manufacturers of the Macintosh range of personal computers as well as the earlier Apple I, Apple II and Lisa. Founded on 1 April 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Apples were among the first microcomputers. They originally used the 6502 processor and are still being made (August 1994), now using the 65816. The Apple II line, which includes the Apple I, is the longest existing line of microcomputers. Steve Jobs left Apple (involuntarily) and started NeXT and later returned when Apple bought NeXT in late 1997(?). Quarterly sales $2150M, profits $138M (Aug 1994). http://apple.com/.
  • application software — software designed for a specific need or purpose
  • applications program — a program that is written and designed for specific needs or purposes
  • arches national park — a national park in E Utah: natural arch formations. 114 sq. mi. (295 sq. km).
  • archiepiscopal cross — patriarchal cross.
  • architectural bronze — a brass alloy of about 57 percent copper, 41 percent zinc, and 2 percent lead.
  • aristarchus of samos — 3rd century bc, Greek astronomer who anticipated Copernicus in advancing the theory that the earth revolves around the sun
  • articulatory feature — a property of a speech sound based on its voicing or on its place or manner of articulation in the vocal tract, as voiceless, bilabial, or stop used in describing the sound (p).
  • artificial harmonics — harmonics of a note produced on a stringed instrument by lightly touching a stopped sounded string.
  • artificial selection — a process in the breeding of animals and in the cultivation of plants by which the breeder chooses to perpetuate only those forms having certain desirable inheritable characteristics.
  • asexual reproduction — reproduction, as budding, fission, or spore formation, not involving the union of gametes.
  • assessment procedure — an established method of assessing students or workers
  • association of stars — a sparsely populated group of between 10 and 1000 young stars of similar spectral type and common origin that are moving too fast to form a permanent, gravitationally bound system.
  • astatic galvanometer — a galvanometer that is unaffected by the earth's magnetic field and is used for measuring small currents.
  • at someone's service — ready to serve or cooperate with someone
  • at the crack of dawn — If you say that someone does something at the crack of dawn, you are emphasizing that they do it very early in the morning.
  • at two hours' notice — with notification only two hours in advance
  • atmospheric pressure — Atmospheric pressure is the pressure of the atmosphere on the Earth's surface.
  • attic salt (or wit) — graceful, piercing wit
  • automobile insurance — Automobile insurance is insurance coverage for cars.
  • axiomatic set theory — (theory)   One of several approaches to set theory, consisting of a formal language for talking about sets and a collection of axioms describing how they behave. There are many different axiomatisations for set theory. Each takes a slightly different approach to the problem of finding a theory that captures as much as possible of the intuitive idea of what a set is, while avoiding the paradoxes that result from accepting all of it, the most famous being Russell's paradox. The main source of trouble in naive set theory is the idea that you can specify a set by saying whether each object in the universe is in the "set" or not. Accordingly, the most important differences between different axiomatisations of set theory concern the restrictions they place on this idea (known as "comprehension"). NBG (von Neumann-Bernays-Goedel) set theory sort of allows comprehension for all formulae without restriction, but distinguishes between two kinds of set, so that the sets produced by applying comprehension are only second-class sets. NBG is exactly as powerful as ZF, in the sense that any statement that can be formalised in both theories is a theorem of ZF if and only if it is a theorem of ZFC. MK (Morse-Kelley) set theory is a strengthened version of NBG, with a simpler axiom system. It is strictly stronger than NBG, and it is possible that NBG might be consistent but MK inconsistent. ML ("Modern Logic") is to NF as NBG is to ZF. (Its name derives from the title of the book in which Quine introduced an early, defective, form of it). It is stronger than ZF (it can prove things that ZF can't), but if NF is consistent then ML is too.
  • baccalaureate sermon — a farewell sermon addressed to a graduating class in some U.S. colleges and schools.
  • back the wrong horse — to bet on a horse that loses the race
  • background radiation — low-intensity radiation from, for example, small amounts of radioisotopes in soil, air, building materials, etc
  • backward and forward — If someone or something moves backward and forward, they move repeatedly first in one direction and then in the opposite direction.
  • backwards compatible — backward compatibility
  • bacteriochlorophylls — Plural form of bacteriochlorophyll.
  • ballistic trajectory — the path of an unpowered object, as a missile, moving only under the influence of gravity and possibly atmospheric friction and with its surface providing no significant lift to alter the course of flight.
  • barrack-room ballads — a volume of poems (1892) by Rudyard Kipling, including Gunga Din, Danny Deever, and Mandalay.
  • basal cell carcinoma — a common and usually curable skin cancer that arises from epithelial cells and rarely metastasizes: often associated with overexposure to sunlight.
  • basal metabolic rate — the rate at which heat is produced by the body at rest, 12 to 14 hours after eating, measured in kilocalories per square metre of body surface per hour
  • basic encoding rules — (protocol, standard)   (BER) ASN.1 encoding rules for producing self-identifying and self-delimiting transfer syntax for data structures described in ASN.1 notations. BER is an self-identifying and self-delimiting encoding scheme, which means that each data value can be identified, extracted and decoded individually. Huw Rogers once described BER as "a triumph of bloated theory over clean implementation". He also criticises it as designed around bitstreams with arbitrary boundaries between data which can only be determined at a high level. Documents: ITU-T X.690, ISO 8825-1. See also CER, DER, PER.
  • basic lead carbonate — ceruse.
  • basic object adapter — (architecture)   (BOA) Part of the CORBA architecture.
  • basic oxygen process — a process for refining steel in which oxygen is blown into the molten iron
  • bats-wing coral-tree — a small tree, Erythrina verspertilio, of tropical and subtropical Australia with red flowers and leaves shaped like the wings of a bat
  • be called to the bar — to become a barrister
  • benzene hexachloride — a compound, C6H6Cl6, used as an insecticide
  • bernard of clairvaux — Saint. ?1090–1153, French abbot and theologian, who founded the stricter branch of the Cistercians in 1115
  • binary coded decimal — (data)   (BCD, packed decimal) A number representation where a number is expressed as a sequence of decimal digits and then each decimal digit is encoded as a four-bit binary number (a nibble). E.g. decimal 92 would be encoded as the eight-bit sequence 1001 0010. In some cases, the right-most nibble contains the sign (positive or negative). It is easier to convert decimal numbers to and from BCD than binary and, though BCD is often converted to binary for arithmetic processing, it is possible to build hardware that operates directly on BCD.
  • binary-coded decimal — a number in binary code written in groups of four bits, each group representing one digit of the corresponding decimal number
  • biological diversity — Biological diversity is the same as biodiversity.
  • bismarck archipelago — a group of over 200 islands in the SW Pacific, northeast of New Guinea: part of Papua New Guinea. Main islands: New Britain, New Ireland, Lavongai, and the Admiralty Islands. Chief town: Rabaul, on New Britain. Pop: 566 610 (2000). Area: 49 658 sq km (19 173 sq miles)
  • black-bellied plover — a large plover, Pluvialis squatarola, of both the New and Old Worlds, having black underparts when in nuptial plumage.
  • black-throated diver — a diving bird, Gavia arctica, found in Europe and Asia, and a rare summer visitor to the UK
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