16-letter words containing a, l
- counterguerrilla — (of operations, conflicts, etc) conducted against guerrillas
- counterproposals — Plural form of counterproposal.
- court of appeals — A Court of Appeals is a court which deals with appeals against legal judgments.
- cramp sb's style — If someone or something cramps your style, their presence or existence restricts your behavior in some way.
- cray instability — A shortcoming of a program or algorithm that manifests itself only when a large problem is being run on a powerful machine such as a Cray. Generally more subtle than bugs that can be detected in smaller problems running on a workstation or minicomputer.
- crime passionnel — a crime committed from passion, esp sexual passion
- criminal assault — a punishable offence of attempting to harm another person through physical contact
- criminal justice — the system of law enforcement, involving police, lawyers, courts, and corrections, used for all stages of criminal proceedings and punishment.
- criminal offence — an action which is punishable under the law
- critical damping — the minimum amount of viscous damping that results in a displaced system returning to its original position without oscillation
- critical density — the density of matter that would be required to halt the expansion of the universe
- critical section — A non-re-entrant piece of code that can only be executed by one process at a time. It will usually terminate in bounded time and a process will only have to wait a bounded time to enter it. Some synchronisation mechanism is required at the entry and exit of the critical section to ensure exclusive use.
- cross of calvary — a Latin cross with a representation of steps beneath it.
- cross-curricular — denoting or relating to an approach to a topic that includes contributions from several different disciplines and viewpoints
- cross-validation — a process by which a method that works for one sample of a population is checked for validity by applying the method to another sample from the same population.
- croydon facelift — the tightening effect on the skin of a woman's face caused by securing the hair at the back of the head in a tight ponytail
- cryptozoological — (cryptozoology) Of or pertaining to cryptozoology.
- crystal detector — a demodulator, used esp in microwave circuits and in early radio receivers, consisting of a thin metal wire in point contact with a semiconductor crystal
- crystalline lens — a biconvex transparent elastic structure in the eye situated behind the iris, serving to focus images on the retina
- crystallographer — A person skilled in crystallography.
- crystallographic — of, relating to, or dealing with crystals or crystallography.
- cuban royal palm — a feather palm, Roystonea regia, of tropical America, having a trunk that is swollen in the middle, drooping leaves from 10 to 15 feet (3 to 5 meters) long, and small, round fruit.
- cultural-capital — Sociology. the skills, education, norms, and behaviors acquired by members of a social group that can give them economic and other advantages: The accumulation of cultural capital is one route to upward mobility.
- cumberland sauce — a cold sauce made from orange and lemon juice, port, and redcurrant jelly, served with ham, game, or other meat
- curlew sandpiper — a common Eurasian sandpiper, Calidris ferruginea, having a brick-red breeding plumage and a greyish winter plumage
- curriculum vitae — A curriculum vitae is the same as a CV.
- cut and blow-dry — a hairdressing procedure in which the customer's hair is cut and blow-dried
- cyclohexamantane — (chemistry) A certain diamondoid, C26H30.
- cyclophosphamide — an alkylating agent used in the treatment of leukaemia and lymphomas
- cytotrophoblasts — Plural form of cytotrophoblast.
- d-glyceraldehyde — an isomer of glyceraldehyde in which the OH group is on the right side of the asymmetric carbon atom.
- dafydd ap gwilym — ?1320–?1380, Welsh poet
- dakin's solution — a dilute solution containing sodium hypochlorite and boric acid, used as an antiseptic in the treatment of wounds
- dangling pointer — (programming) A reference that doesn't actually lead anywhere. In C and some other languages, a pointer that doesn't actually point at anything valid. Usually this happens because it formerly pointed to something that has moved or disappeared, e.g. a heap-allocated block which has been freed and reused. Used as jargon in a generalisation of its technical meaning; for example, a local phone number for a person who has since moved is a dangling pointer.
- database analyst — (job) A person who uses data modeling to analyse and specify data use within an application area. A database analyst defines both logical views and physical data structures. In a client/server environment, he defines the database part of the back end system.
- davila y padilla — Agustín ("Chronicler of the Indies") 1562–1604, Mexican historian.
- daylight robbery — If someone charges you a great deal of money for something and you think this is unfair or unreasonable, you can refer to this as daylight robbery.
- de broglie waves — the set of waves that represent the behaviour of an elementary particle, or some atoms and molecules, under certain conditions. The de Broglie wavelength, λ, is given by λ = h/mv, where h is the Planck constant, m the mass, and v the velocity of the particle
- de morgan's laws — (in formal logic and set theory) the principles that conjunction and disjunction, or union and intersection, are dual. Thus the negation of P & Q is equivalent to not-P or not-Q
- de-anglicization — (in Ireland) the elimination of English influence, language, customs, etc
- de-stalinization — the elimination of the influence of Stalin
- dead man walking — a condemned man walking from his prison cell to a place of execution
- dead sea scrolls — a collection of manuscripts in Hebrew and Aramaic discovered in caves near the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956. They are widely held to have been written between about 100 bc and 68 ad and provide important biblical evidence
- dead-man's float — a prone floating position, used especially by beginning swimmers, with face downward, legs extended backward, and arms stretched forward.
- dead-smooth file — the smoothest grade of file commonly used
- dealcoholization — to remove some or all of the alcohol from (a drink).
- dear john letter — a letter from someone (esp to a man) breaking off a love affair
- decapitalization — to deprive of capital; discourage capital formation; withdraw capital from: The government decapitalized industry with harsh tax policies.
- decentralisation — Alternative spelling of decentralization.
- decentralization — to distribute the administrative powers or functions of (a central authority) over a less concentrated area: to decentralize the national government.