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18-letter words containing a, c, t, u, r, e

  • creeping featurism — (jargon)   /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ (Or "feature creep") A systematic tendency to load more chrome and features onto systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed when originally designed. "The main problem with BSD Unix has always been creeping featurism." More generally, creeping featurism is the tendency for anything to become more complicated because people keep saying "Gee, it would be even better if it had this feature too". The result is usually a patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra little feature to help someone, and then another, and another, .... When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a cancer. Usually this term is used to describe computer programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the IRS 1040 form, and new cars. A similar phenomenon sometimes afflicts conscious redesigns; see second-system effect. See also creeping elegance.
  • crude oil desalter — A crude oil desalter is equipment which removes inorganic salts from crude oil, using chemical or electrostatic separation.
  • crude oil fraction — A crude oil fraction is a component of crude oil, which has its own particular molecular composition, weight, and boiling point.
  • cultural awareness — Someone's cultural awareness is their understanding of the differences between themselves and people from other countries or other backgrounds, especially differences in attitudes and values.
  • cultural diversity — the cultural variety and cultural differences that exist in the world, a society, or an institution: Dying languages and urbanization are threats to cultural diversity.
  • cultural universal — a cultural pattern extant in every known society.
  • cumberland plateau — division of the W Appalachians, extending from S W.Va. to N Ala.
  • cumulative scoring — a method of scoring in which the score of a partnership is taken as the sum of their scores on all hands played.
  • curvature of field — a monochromatic aberration of a lens or other optical system in which the focal surface is curved, the refracted image of an object oriented perpendicular to the axis of the lens lying on a curved surface rather than in a plane perpendicular to the axis.
  • curvature of space — (in relativity) a property of space near massive bodies in which their gravitational field causes light to travel along curved paths.
  • customer relations — Customer relations are the relationships that a business has with its customers and the way in which it treats them.
  • death-valley curve — a curve on a graph showing how the capital of a new company plotted against time declines sharply as the venture capital is used up before income reaches predicted levels
  • defense calculator — IBM 701
  • dermot macmurrough — ?1110–71, king of Leinster, who, by enlisting the support of the English to win back his kingdom, was responsible for the English conquest of Ireland
  • descriptive clause — a relative clause that describes or supplements but is not essential in establishing the identity of the antecedent and is usually set off by commas in English. In This year, which has been dry, is bad for crops the clause which has been dry is a nonrestrictive clause.
  • destruct mechanism — a mechanism that causes the destruction of a rocket or missile when activated
  • 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
  • diatomaceous earth — an unconsolidated form of diatomite
  • dramatic monologue — a poetic form in which a single character, addressing a silent auditor at a critical moment, reveals himself or herself and the dramatic situation.
  • driver's education — high-school driving classes
  • ejaculatio praecox — premature ejaculation during sexual intercourse
  • electrical circuit — An electrical circuit is a complete route that an electric current can flow around.
  • electrical failure — an instance when an electricity supply stops working
  • electroacupuncture — the insertion into the body of one or more needles through which an electric current is passed
  • electrostatic unit — any unit that belongs to a system of electrical cgs units in which the electric constant is given the value of unity and is taken as a pure number
  • electrotherapeutic — Relating to electrotherapeutics.
  • equinoctial circle — celestial equator
  • equinoctial spring — either of the two highest spring tides that occur at the equinoxes
  • equivalent circuit — an arrangement of simple electrical components that is electrically equivalent to a complex circuit and is used to simplify circuit analysis
  • established church — a Church that is officially recognized as a national institution, esp the Church of England
  • euclid's algorithm — (algorithm)   (Or "Euclidean Algorithm") An algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor (GCD) of two numbers. It relies on the identity gcd(a, b) = gcd(a-b, b) To find the GCD of two numbers by this algorithm, repeatedly replace the larger by subtracting the smaller from it until the two numbers are equal. E.g. 132, 168 -> 132, 36 -> 96, 36 -> 60, 36 -> 24, 36 -> 24, 12 -> 12, 12 so the GCD of 132 and 168 is 12. This algorithm requires only subtraction and comparison operations but can take a number of steps proportional to the difference between the initial numbers (e.g. gcd(1, 1001) will take 1000 steps).
  • european community — an economic and political association of European States that came into being in 1967, when the legislative and executive bodies of the European Economic Community merged with those of the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Atomic Energy Community: subsumed into the European Union in 1993
  • executive chairman — the most senior internal position within a company, combining the duties of chairman and chief executive
  • feeping creaturism — /fee'ping kree"ch*r-izm/ A deliberate spoonerism for creeping featurism, meant to imply that the system or program in question has become a misshapen creature of hacks. This term isn"t really well defined, but it sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. It is probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in the dark making their customary noises.
  • fettuccine alfredo — fettuccine in cream sauce with grated Parmesan cheese.
  • first class module — (programming)   A module that is a first class data object of the programming language, e.g. a record containing functions. In a functional language, it is standard to have first class programs, so program building blocks can have the same status.
  • fourth commandment — “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy”: fourth of the Ten Commandments.
  • fracture toughness — The fracture toughness of a material is how likely it is to resist fracture.
  • gas-discharge tube — any tube in which an electric discharge takes place through a gas
  • graduated cylinder — a narrow, cylindrical container marked with horizontal lines to represent units of measurement and used to precisely measure the volume of liquids.
  • grandfather clause — U.S. History. a clause in the constitutions of some Southern states after 1890 intended to permit whites to vote while disfranchising blacks: it exempted from new literacy and property qualifications for voting those men entitled to vote before 1867 and their lineal descendants.
  • granulated surface — a roughened surface
  • handlebar mustache — A handlebar mustache is a long thick mustache with curled ends.
  • haulage contractor — a person or firm that transports goods by lorry
  • heart-lung machine — a device through which blood is shunted temporarily for oxygenation during surgery, while the heart or a lung is being repaired.
  • hyper-intellectual — appealing to or engaging the intellect: intellectual pursuits.
  • in terrorem clause — a clause in a will stating that a beneficiary who contests the will shall lose his or her legacy.
  • incommensurability — not commensurable; having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison.
  • 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.
  • indecent behaviour — the offence of committing indecent acts
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