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24-letter words containing a, n, o, t, e

  • butylated hydroxytoluene — BHT.
  • by common/mutual consent — If something happens by common consent or by mutual consent, it happens as the result of an agreement between the people or groups involved.
  • californian spangled cat — a breed of short-haired cat with a spotted coat, bred in California to resemble a leopard in appearance
  • carcinoembryonic antigen — a glycoprotein found in serum, urine, etc. that is associated with various types of tumors: monitoring its levels is useful in treating cancer patients
  • carry coals to newcastle — 1st Duke of, Pelham-Holles, Thomas.
  • cast pearls before swine — to present something of great interest or value to someone incapable of appreciating it
  • cellular multiprocessing — (architecture, parallel)   (CMP) The partitioning of processors into separate computing environments running different operating systems. The term cellular multiprocessing appears to have been coined by Unisys, who are developing a system where computers communicate as clustered machines through a high speed bus, rather than through communication protocols such as TCP/IP. The Unisys system is based on Intel processors, initially the Pentium II Xeon and moving on to the 64-bit Merced processors later in 1999. It will be scalable from four up to 32 processors, which can be clustered or partitioned in various ways. For example a sixteen processor system could be configured as four Windows NT systems (each functioning as a four-processor symmetric multiprocessing system), or an 8-way NT and 8-way Unix system. Supported operating systems will be Windows NT, SCO's Unixware 7.0, Unisys' SVR4 Unix and possibly the OS2200 and MCP-AS mainframe operating systems (with the assistance of Unisys' own dedicated chipset).
  • cerebrospinal meningitis — an acute infectious form of meningitis caused by the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis, characterized by high fever, skin rash, delirium, stupor, and sometimes coma
  • cerebrovascular accident — a sudden interruption of the blood supply to the brain caused by rupture of an artery in the brain (cerebral haemorrhage) or the blocking of a blood vessel, as by a clot of blood (cerebral occlusion)
  • chain and sprocket drive — A chain and sprocket drive is a type of power transmission in which a roller chain engages with two or more toothed wheels or sprockets, used in engines as a drive from crankshaft to camshaft.
  • chromaticity coordinates — three numbers used to specify a colour, each of which is equal to one of the three tristimulus values divided by their sum
  • chronic fatigue syndrome — Chronic fatigue syndrome is an illness that is thought to be caused by a virus, and which affects people for a long period of time. Its symptoms include tiredness and aching muscles. The abbreviation CFS is often used.
  • coal-fired power station — a power station that generates electricity by the burning of coal
  • coefficient of expansion — the amount of expansion (or contraction) per unit length of a material resulting from one degree change in temperature
  • coefficient of variation — a measure of the relative variation of distribution independent of the units of measurement; the standard deviation divided by the mean, sometimes expressed as a percentage
  • cog in the machine/wheel — If you describe someone as a cog in a machine or wheel, you mean that they are a small part of a large organization or group.
  • combat infantryman badge — a badge awarded to an infantryman in recognition of satisfactory performance of duty in ground combat against the enemy.
  • come/go to someone's aid — If you come or go to someone's aid, you try to help them when they are in danger or difficulty.
  • command-line interpreter — command interpreter
  • common gateway interface — (web)   (CGI) A standard for running external programs from a web HTTP server. CGI specifies how to pass arguments to the program as part of the HTTP request. It also defines a set of environment variables that are made available to the program. The program generates output, typically HTML, which the web server processes and passes back to the browser. Alternatively, the program can request URL redirection. CGI allows the returned output to depend in any arbitrary way on the request. The CGI program can, for example, access information in a database and format the results as HTML. The program can access any data that a normal application program can, however the facilities available to CGI programs are usually limited for security reasons. Although CGI programs can be compiled programs, they are more often written in a (semi) interpreted language such as Perl, or as Unix shell scripts, hence the common name "CGI script". Here is a trivial CGI script written in Perl. (It requires the "CGI" module available from CPAN). #!/usr/bin/perl use CGI qw(:standard); print header, start_html, h1("CGI Test"), "Your IP address is: ", remote_host(), end_html; When run it produces an HTTP header and then a simple HTML page containing the IP address or hostname of the machine that generated the initial request. If run from a command prompt it outputs: Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Untitled Document

    CGI Test

    Your IP address is: localhost The CGI program might be saved as the file "test.pl" in the appropriate directory on a web server, e.g. "/home/httpd/test". Accessing the appropriate URL, e.g. http://acme.com/test/test.pl, would cause the program to run and a custom page produced and returned. Early web servers required all CGI programs to be installed in one directory called cgi-bin but it is better to keep them with the HTML files to which they relate unless they are truly global to the site. Similarly, it is neither necessary nor desirable for all CGI programs to have the extension ".cgi". Each CGI request is handled by a new process. If the process fails to terminate for some reason, or if requests are received faster than the server can respond to them, the server may become swamped with processes. In order to improve performance, Netscape devised NSAPI and Microsoft developed the ISAPI standard which allow CGI-like tasks to run as part of the main server process, thus avoiding the overhead of creating a new process to handle each CGI invocation. Other solutions include mod_perl and FastCGI.
  • common information model — (standard)   (CIM) An open systems management standard driven by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF).
  • common program interface — (programming)   (CPI) The API of SAA.
  • communications satellite — an artificial satellite used to relay radio, television, and telephone signals around the earth, usually in geostationary orbit
  • communicative competence — a speaker's internalized knowledge both of the grammatical rules of a language and of the rules for appropriate use in social contexts.
  • compact disc interactive — (storage)   (CD-i) An embedded application of CD-ROM allowing the user limited interaction with films, games and educational applications via a special controller.
  • compact fluorescent lamp — A compact fluorescent lamp is a small fluorescent lamp (= a tubular light bulb coated with phosphor which produces a bright light) that has a lamp life that is much longer than incandescent lamps.
  • compensatory lengthening — the lengthening of a vowel when a following consonant is weakened or lost, as the change from Old English niht [nikht] /nɪxt/ (Show IPA) to night [nahyt] /naɪt/ (Show IPA) with loss of [kh] /x/ (Show IPA) and lengthening of [i] /ɪ/ (Show IPA) to a vowel that eventually became [ahy] /aɪ/ (Show IPA).
  • compiler target language — (CTL) The intermediate language used by the ALICE parallel machine.
  • complement fixation test — a serological test for detecting the presence of a specific antibody or antigen, used in the diagnosis of syphilis, etc
  • complement-fixation test — a test for diagnosing an infectious disease by detecting the presence of antibody in the blood, based on the fixing of a known quantity of complement to the antigen being tested and the specific antibody that combines with it. Abbreviation: CFT.
  • complementary wavelength — the wavelength of monochromatic light that could be mixed in suitable proportions with a given coloured light so as to produce some specified achromatic light
  • complexometric titration — a titration in which a coloured complex is formed, usually by the use of a chelating agent, such as EDTA, the end point being marked by a sharp decrease in the concentration of free metal ions
  • computational complexity — (algorithm)   The number of steps or arithmetic operations required to solve a computational problem. One of the three kinds of complexity.
  • computer design language — (language)   An ALGOL-like language for computer design.
  • condensed matter physics — the branch of physics that deals with the macroscopic physical properties of matter, especially solids; the study of the electromagnetic, structural, and thermodynamic properties of solids.
  • condensed-matter physics — the branch of physics that deals with the macroscopic physical properties of matter, especially solids; the study of the electromagnetic, structural, and thermodynamic properties of solids.
  • conductometric titration — titration in which the end point is determined by measuring the resistance of the solution to an electric current that is passed through it.
  • confederate memorial day — a day set aside in the South to pay tribute to those who served with the Confederate forces during the American Civil War. It is observed on April 26 in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; on May 10 in North Carolina and South Carolina; on May 30 in Virginia; and on June 3 in Kentucky, Louisiana, and Tennessee.
  • configuration management — (job, system management)   A discipline applying technical and administrative controls to identifying, documentating and reporting on configuration items, their physical and functional characteristics and changes to characteristics of those configuration items.
  • congestive heart failure — heart failure characterized by weakness, breathlessness, and abnormal congestion in the circulatory system, esp. in the lungs or lower legs
  • conservation of momentum — the principle that the total linear or angular momentum in any isolated system is constant, provided that no external force is applied
  • consonantal alliteration — the use of the same consonant at the beginning of each word or each stressed syllable in a line of verse, as in around the rock the ragged rascal ran
  • constant linear velocity — (storage)   (CLV) A way of controlling the rotation of the disks in a disk drive in which the linear velocity of the disk surface relative to the read/write heads is kept constant. In order to achieve constant linear velocity, the disk must rotate faster (at a higher angular velocity) when reading or writing tracks closer to the centre. Having a constant linear read/write speed along the track means that the electrical signal to and from the heads has a constant data rate (bits per second), thus simplifying the timing of the drive electronics somewhat. However, rotating at less than the maximum possible rate sacrifices some potential performance compared to the alternative, constant angular velocity. Also, varying the rate causes more vibration and consumes more energy.
  • constantinopolitan creed — a formal statement of the chief tenets of Christian belief, adopted by the first Nicene Council.
  • consultant paediatrician — a paediatrician who has attained the rank of consultant
  • cooperative credit union — a cooperative group that makes loans to its members at low rates of interest.
  • cooperative multitasking — (parallel, operating system)   A form of multitasking where it is the responsibility of the currently running task to give up the processor to allow other tasks to run. This contrasts with pre-emptive multitasking where the task scheduler periodically suspends the running task and restarts another. Cooperative multitasking requires the programmer to place calls at suitable points in his code to allow his task to be descheduled which is not always easy if there is no obvious top-level main loop or some routines run for a long time. If a task does not allow itself to be descheduled all other tasks on the system will appear to "freeze" and will not respond to user action. The advantage of cooperative multitasking is that the programmer knows where the program will be descheduled and can make sure that this will not cause unwanted interaction with other processes. Under pre-emptive multitasking, the scheduler must ensure that sufficient state for each process is saved and restored that they will not interfere. Thus cooperative multitasking can have lower overheads than pre-emptive multitasking because of the greater control it offers over when a task may be descheduled. Cooperative multitasking is used in RISC OS, Microsoft Windows and Macintosh System 7.
  • cost-of-living allowance — an additional payment which takes account of the cost of living
  • council of nationalities — the legislature of the former Soviet Union and its successor states, consisting of an upper house (Soviet of the Union or Council of the Union) whose delegates are elected on the basis of population, and a lower house (Soviet of Nationalities or Council of Nationalities) whose delegates are elected to represent the various nationalities.
  • crypt breakers workbench — (cbw) A freely distributable multi-window integrated workbench of tools for cryptanalysis of files encrypted with the 4.2BSD Unix crypt command. It was originally written by Robert W. Baldwin at MIT.
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