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18-letter words containing a, m, e, s

  • coffee-table music — unadventurous music
  • collision diameter — the distance between the centers of two colliding molecules when at their closest point of approach.
  • combination square — an adjustable device for carpenters, used as a try square, miter square, level, etc.
  • combustion chamber — an enclosed space in which combustion takes place, such as the space above the piston in the cylinder head of an internal-combustion engine or the chambers in a gas turbine or rocket engine in which fuel and oxidant burn
  • combustion furnace — a furnace used in the laboratory to carry out elemental analysis of organic compounds
  • come someone's way — to come within someone's scope or range; come to someone
  • common command set — (storage, standard)   (CCS) Additional requirements and features for direct-access SCSI devices. In 1985 when the first SCSI standard was being finalised as an American National Standard, the X3T9.2 Task Group was approached by some manufacturers who wanted changes. Rather than delay the SCSI standard, X3T9.2 formed an ad hoc group to define CCS.
  • common user access — (programming)   (CUA) The user interface standard of SAA.
  • commonwealth games — an event held every four years in which sportspeople from the countries of the Commonwealth compete
  • compact video disc — a compact laser disc that plays both pictures and sound
  • comparison shopper — an employee of a retail store hired to visit competing stores in order to gather information regarding styles, quality, prices, etc., of merchandise offered by competitors.
  • compassion fatigue — the inability to react sympathetically to a crisis, disaster, etc, because of overexposure to previous crises, disasters, etc
  • compassionlessness — The quality, state, or condition of being compassionless; uncompassion.
  • compensation award — an amount of money awarded as compensation in a court case
  • compensation order — (in Britain) the requirement of a court that an offender pay compensation for injury, loss, or damage resulting from an offence, either in preference to or as well as a fine
  • compensation point — the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide at which the rate of carbon dioxide uptake by a photosynthesizing plant is exactly balanced by its rate of carbon dioxide release in respiration and photorespiration
  • complementarianism — The doctrine that genders in a society should have complementary roles.
  • complementary base — either of the nucleotide bases linked by a hydrogen bond on opposite strands of DNA or double-stranded RNA: guanine is the complementary base of cytosine, and adenine is the complementary base of thymine in DNA and of uracil in RNA.
  • complexity measure — (algorithm)   A quantity describing the complexity of a computation.
  • compressor program — a computer program that compresses data
  • compressor station — A compressor station is a facility with several compressors (= devices that increase the pressure of air or natural gas) and other equipment to pump natural gas under pressure over long distances.
  • conceptual realism — the doctrine that universals have real and independent existence.
  • considered harmful — (programming, humour)   A type of phrase based on the title of Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous note in the March 1968 Communications of the ACM, "Goto Statement Considered Harmful", which fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars. Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently harmful that it will (by policy) no longer print articles taking so assertive a position against a coding practice. In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and parodies bore titles of the form "X considered Y". The structured-programming wars eventually blew over with the realisation that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has remained as a persistent minor in-joke.
  • consolato del mare — a code of maritime law compiled in the Middle Ages: it drew upon ancient law and has influenced modern law.
  • contact dermatitis — dermatitis caused by direct contact with an irritating substance, as an allergen or chemical
  • continental system — French system.
  • cool as a cucumber — very calm; self-possessed
  • costume department — the department in a theatre or television company that is responsible for actors' costumes
  • cot death syndrome — the unexplained sudden death of an infant during sleep
  • counterculturalism — The counterculture movement or lifestyle.
  • court of st. james — the British royal court
  • 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.
  • creme de framboise — a liqueur flavored with raspberries.
  • crookes radiometer — a type of radiometer consisting of an evacuated glass bulb containing a set of lightweight vanes, each blackened on one side. The vanes are mounted on a vertical axis and revolve when light, or other radiant energy, falls on them
  • crystal microphone — a microphone that uses a piezoelectric crystal to convert sound energy into electrical energy
  • 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.
  • customer relations — Customer relations are the relationships that a business has with its customers and the way in which it treats them.
  • customs and excise — Customs and Excise is a British government department which is responsible for collecting taxes on imported and exported goods. Compare Customs Service.
  • daytime television — television broadcasts that are shown during the daytime rather than in the evening
  • dead man's fingers — a soft coral, Alcyonium digitatum, with long finger-like polyps
  • dead-man's fingers — any of various fungi, sponges, plant roots, animal parts, etc., having fingerlike projections and a pale or dull color, as the gray-black woodland fungus Xylaria polymorpha or the whitish spongy gills of a food crab.
  • deanthropomorphism — the ridding of philosophy or religion of anthropomorphic beliefs and doctrines.
  • deep-sea fisherman — a person who takes part in deep-sea fishing
  • delmarva peninsula — a peninsula of the northeast US, between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic
  • demand liabilities — the assets of a financial institution that are demandable by depositors
  • demorgan's theorem — (logic)   A logical theorem which states that the complement of a conjunction is the disjunction of the complements or vice versa. In symbols: not (x and y) = (not x) or (not y) not (x or y) = (not x) and (not y) E.g. if it is not the case that I am tall and thin then I am either short or fat (or both). The theorem can be extended to combinations of more than two terms in the obvious way. The same laws also apply to sets, replacing logical complement with set complement, conjunction ("and") with set intersection, and disjunction ("or") with set union. A (C) programmer might use this to re-write if (!foo && !bar) ... as if (!(foo || bar)) ... thus saving one operator application (though an optimising compiler should do the same, leaving the programmer free to use whichever form seemed clearest).
  • departmental store — a department store.
  • desiderius erasmus — Desiderius [des-i-deer-ee-uh s] /ˌdɛs ɪˈdɪər i əs/ (Show IPA), 1466?–1536, Dutch humanist, scholar, theologian, and writer.
  • destruct mechanism — a mechanism that causes the destruction of a rocket or missile when activated
  • dia de los muertos — Day of the Dead.
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