21-letter words containing a, p, o
- blot on the landscape — If you describe something such as a building as a blot on the landscape, you mean that you think it is very ugly and spoils an otherwise attractive place.
- bluethroat pikeblenny — See under pikeblenny.
- bonnie prince charlie — a member of the royal family that ruled in Scotland from 1371 to 1714 and in England from 1603 to 1714.
- book of common prayer — the official book of church services of the Church of England, until 1980, when the Alternative Service Book was sanctioned
- bottom-up programming — a programming technique in which lower-level modules are developed before higher-level modules.
- breath-of-life packet — (XEROX PARC) An Ethernet packet that contains bootstrap code, periodically sent out from a working computer to infuse the "breath of life" into any computer on the network that has crashed. Computers depending on such packets have sufficient hardware or firmware code to wait for (or request) such a packet during the reboot process. See also dickless workstation. The notional "kiss-of-death packet", with a function complementary to that of a breath-of-life packet, is recommended for dealing with hosts that consume too many network resources. Though "kiss-of-death packet" is usually used in jest, there is at least one documented instance of an Internet subnet with limited address-table slots in a gateway computer in which such packets were routinely used to compete for slots, rather like Christmas shoppers competing for scarce parking spaces.
- bromine pentafluoride — a colorless, corrosive liquid, BrF 5 , used as an oxidizer in liquid rocket propellants.
- buffalo carpet beetle — any of several small beetles of the family Dermestidae, the larvae of which are household pests, feeding on rugs and other woolen fabrics, especially Anthrenus scrophulariae (buffalo carpet beetle) and Attagenus piceus (black carpet beetle)
- burroughs corporation — (company) A company which merged with Sperry Univac to form Unisys Corporation. They produced the Datatron 200 series among other computers.
- castellon de la plana — a port in E Spain. Pop: 160 714 (2003 est)
- central european time — the standard time adopted by Western European countries one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, corresponding to British Summer Time
- character development — the portrayal of people in a work of fiction in such a way that the reader or audience seems to learn more about them as they develop
- charge-coupled device — an electronic device, used in imaging and signal processing, in which information is represented as packets of electric charge that are stored in an array of tiny closely spaced capacitors and can be moved from one capacitor to another in a controlled way
- charterhouse of parma — a novel (1839) by Stendhal.
- chocolate chip cookie — a biscuit containing chips of chocolate
- circular polarization — electromagnetic radiation (esp light) in which the electric field vector describes a circle about the direction of propagation at any point in the path of the radiation
- clinical psychologist — a practitioner of clinical psychology
- college of propaganda — information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.
- column chromatography — the separation of mixtures into their constituents by preferential adsorption by a solid, as a column of silica (column chromatography) or a strip of filter paper (paper chromatography) or by a gel.
- combination principle — Ritz combination principle.
- committal proceedings — a preliminary hearing in a magistrates' court to decide if there is a case to answer
- companionate marriage — a proposed system of trial marriage in which the couple would postpone having children and could be divorced by mutual consent, until a final decision to stay married is reached
- comparative philology — comparative linguistics.
- comparative statement — a financial statement with figures arranged in two or more parallel columns, each column representing a fiscal year or other period, used to compare performance between periods.
- comparison microscope — a microscope having two objective lenses and using a system of prisms to form in one eyepiece adjacent images of two different objects.
- compensation neurosis — an unconscious attempt to retain physical or psychological symptoms of illness when some advantage may be obtained (distinguished from malingering).
- competitive advantage — an advantage based on success in competition
- complete metric space — (theory) A metric space in which every sequence that converges in itself has a limit. For example, the space of real numbers is complete by Dedekind's axiom, whereas the space of rational numbers is not - e.g. the sequence a[0]=1; a[n_+1]:=a[n]/2+1/a[n].
- completing the square — a method, usually of solving quadratic equations, by which a quadratic expression, as x 2 − 4 x + 3, is written as the sum or difference of a perfect square and a constant, x 2 − 4 x + 4 + 3 − 4 = (x − 2) 2 − 1, by addition and subtraction of appropriate constant terms.
- componential analysis — the analysis of a set of related linguistic items, especially word meanings, into combinations of features in terms of which each item may be compared with every other, as in the analysis of man into the semantic features “male,” “mature,” and “human,” woman into “female,” “mature,” and “human,” girl into “female,” “immature,” and “human,” and bull into “male,” “mature,” and “bovine.”.
- computer aided design — (application) (CAD) The part of CAE concerning the drawing or physical layout steps of engineering design. Often found in the phrase "CAD/CAM" for ".. manufacturing".
- computer architecture — the structure, behaviour, and design of computers
- computer-aided design — the use of computer techniques in designing products, esp involving the use of computer graphics
- compuware corporation — (company) A US software and service company established in 1973. Since 1973, Compuware focused on optimising business software development, testing and operation. In 1999 the company had grown to over 15,000 employees worldwide and revenues of more than $1.6B. By 2013 it had shrunk to less than 5000. Current (2013) products and services include performance optimisation, availability and quality of web, non-web, mobile, streaming and cloud applications; project portfolio management, professional services automation; mainframe applications and developer tools; rapid application development and professional services.
- concert grand (piano) — the largest size of grand piano, for concert performance
- conditional operation — a step in a computer program that determines which of two or more instructions or instruction sequences to execute next, depending on whether or not one or more specified conditions have been met.
- cone penetration test — a method of testing soils by pressing a cone of standard dimensions into the soil under a known load and measuring the penetration
- confidence and supply — denoting an arrangement in a hung parliament in which an opposition party agrees not to vote against a minority government in votes of confidence or budgetary matters but reserves the right to oppose other legislation
- conspiracy of silence — If there is a conspiracy of silence about something, people who know about it have agreed that they will not talk publicly about it, although it would probably be a good thing if people in general knew about it.
- cooperative apartment — a block of flats belonging to a corporation in which shares are owned in proportion to the relative value of the flat occupied
- cooperative-apartment — working or acting together willingly for a common purpose or benefit.
- coordination compound — complex (def 10).
- corporate hospitality — Corporate hospitality is the entertainment that a company offers to its most valued clients, for example by inviting them to sporting events and providing them with food and drink.
- corpus juris canonici — the official compilation of canon law published by authority of Gregory XIII in 1582, superseded by the Codex Juris Canonici in 1918
- corpuscular radiation — radiation consisting of atomic and subatomic particles, as alpha particles, beta particles, and neutrons.
- corrupt practices act — any of several U.S. statutes for ensuring the purity of elections by forbidding the purchase of votes, restricting the amount and source of political contributions, limiting campaign expenditures, and requiring the submission of an itemized statement of such expenditures.
- countably compact set — a set for which every cover consisting of a countable number of sets has a subcover consisting of a finite number of sets.
- counterinterpretation — An interpretation that goes against another interpretation.
- court of common pleas — (formerly) a superior court exercising jurisdiction in civil actions between private citizens
- crankcase compression — Crankcase compression is the method of starting some smaller two-stroke engines, where the mixture charge is compressed in a sealed crankcase by the descending piston before passing to the combustion chamber.