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16-letter words containing a, c, t, e, s

  • barbecue stopper — a controversial current-affairs issue
  • bare necessities — only the essentials
  • basement complex — the undifferentiated assemblage of rock (basement rock) underlying the oldest stratified rocks in any region: usually crystalline, metamorphosed, and mostly, but not necessarily, Precambrian in age.
  • basic dichromate — an orange-red, amorphous, water-insoluble powder, Bi 2 O 3 ⋅2CrO 3 , used chiefly as a pigment in paints.
  • bastard culverin — a 16th-century cannon, smaller than a culverin, firing a shot of between 5 and 8 pounds (11 and 17.6 kg).
  • batch processing — manufacturing products or treating materials in batches, by passing the output of one process to subsequent processes
  • batesian mimicry — mimicry in which a harmless species is protected from predators by means of its resemblance to a harmful or inedible species
  • be of assistance — Someone or something that is of assistance to you is helpful or useful to you.
  • bearish tendency — a tendency for share prices to fall
  • beta abstraction — [lambda-calculus] The conversion of an expression to an application of a lambda abstraction to an argument expression. Some subterm of the original expression becomes the argument of the abstraction and the rest becomes its body. E.g. 4+1 --> (\ x . x+1) 4 The opposite of beta abstraction is beta reduction. These are the two kinds of beta conversion.
  • bimetallic strip — a strip consisting of two metals of different coefficients of expansion welded together so that it buckles on heating: used in thermostats, etc
  • black nightshade — a poisonous solanaceous plant, Solanum nigrum, a common weed in cultivated land, having small white flowers with backward-curved petals and black berry-like fruits
  • blow one's stack — to lose one's temper; fly into a rage
  • boston cream pie — a cake of two layers with icing and a creamy filling
  • bracknell forest — a unitary authority in SE England, in E Berkshire. Pop: 110 100 (2003 est). Area: 109 sq km (42 sq miles)
  • bragg scattering — the diffraction phenomenon exhibited by a crystal bombarded with x-rays in such a way that each plane of the crystal lattice acts as a reflector (Bragg reflector)
  • braking distance — the distance a vehicle travels from the point at which its brakes are applied to the point at which it comes to a stop
  • branchiopneustic — breathing by means of gills, as certain aquatic insect larvae.
  • breakfast cereal — a type of food made from a cereal plant and commonly eaten at breakfast
  • breast screening — a radiological or other examination of a woman's breasts to check for signs of cancer
  • business account — a bank account or type of bank account used for business transactions rather than personal ones
  • buttercup squash — a small, usually dark-green squash that is a variety of Cucurbita maxima, having sweet orange flesh.
  • cabinet minister — a minister who is a member of the cabinet
  • cable television — Cable television is a television system in which signals are sent along wires rather than by radio waves.
  • cache on a stick — (architecture)   (COAST) Intel Corporation attempt to's standardise the modular L2 cache subsystem in Pentium-based computers. A COAST module should be about 4.35" wide by 1.14" high. According to earlier specifications from Motorola, a module between 4.33" and 4.36" wide, and between 1.12" and 1.16" high is within the COAST standard. Some module vendors, including some major motherboard suppliers, greatly violate the height specification. Another COAST specification violated by many suppliers concerns clock distribution in synchronous modules. The specification requires that the clock tree to each synchronous chip be balanced, i.e. equal length from edge of the connector to individual chips. An unbalanced clock tree increases reflections and noise. For a 256 kilobyte cache module the standard requires the same clock be used for both chips but some vendors use separate clocks to reduce loading on the clock driver and hence increase the clock speed. However, this creates unbalanced loading in other motherboard configurations, such as motherboards with soldered caches in the system.
  • calcium arsenate — a toxic, white powder, Ca3(AsO4)2, used as an insecticide in the form of a spray or dust
  • calcium silicate — any of the silicates of calcium: calcium metasilicate, dicalcium silicate, and tricalcium silicate.
  • calculate a risk — If you calculate a risk, you decide how likely an event is, whether the insurer should underwrite the risk, and at what cost.
  • call in question — a sentence in an interrogative form, addressed to someone in order to get information in reply.
  • call one's shots — a discharge of a firearm, bow, etc.
  • call to quarters — a bugle call shortly before taps, notifying soldiers to retire to their quarters
  • canaries current — an ocean current of the North Atlantic flowing southward past Spain and North Africa.
  • canine distemper — distemper1 (def 1a).
  • cantankerousness — disagreeable to deal with; contentious; peevish: a cantankerous, argumentative man.
  • canterbury bells — a cultivated bellflower (Campanula medium) with white, pink, or blue cuplike flowers
  • canterbury tales — an unfinished literary work by Chaucer, largely in verse, consisting of stories told by pilgrims on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket at Canterbury
  • capital reserves — the money which a company holds in reserve
  • capital sentence — the punishment of death for a crime
  • capsizing moment — the moment of an upsetting couple.
  • carboxylesterase — (enzyme) Any enzyme that catalyses the hydrolysis of a carboxylic ester.
  • carboxypeptidase — any of several digestive enzymes that catalyze the removal of an amino acid from the end of a peptide chain having a free carbonyl group.
  • cardinal virtues — the most important moral qualities, traditionally justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude
  • career prospects — the probability or chance for future success in a profession
  • careers mistress — a female teacher who gives pupils advice and information about careers
  • carnot's theorem — the principle that no engine operating between two given temperatures can be more efficient than a Carnot engine operating between the same temperatures.
  • cascade particle — the least massive member of the xi particle family.
  • case insensitive — case sensitivity
  • case sensitivity — (text)   Whether a text matching operation distinguishes upper-case (capital) letters from lower case (is "case sensitive") or not ("case insensitive"). Case in file names should be preserved (for readability) but ignored when matching (so the user doesn't have to get it right). MS-DOS does not preserve case in file names, Unix preserves case and matches are case sensitive. Any decent text editor will allow the user to specify whether or not text searches should be case sensitive. Case sensitivity is also relevant in programming (most programming languages distiguish between case in the names of identifiers), and addressing (Internet domain names are case insensitive but RFC 822 local mailbox names are case sensitive). Case insensitive operations are sometimes said to "fold case", from the idea of folding the character code table so that upper and lower case letters coincide. The alternative "smash case" is more likely to be used by someone who considers this behaviour a misfeature or in cases where one case is actually permanently converted to the other. "MS-DOS will automatically smash case in the names of all the files you create".
  • cashless society — a society in which purchases of goods or services are made by credit card or electronic funds transferral rather than with cash or checks.
  • cassia-bark tree — a lauraceous tree, Cinnamomum cassia, of eastern Asia.
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