20-letter words containing a, r, g, e, i, c
- comparative religion — a field of study seeking to derive general principles from a comparison and classification of the growth and influence of various religions.
- composite photograph — a photograph formed by superimposing two or more separate photographs
- computer programming — the activity or profession of writing computer programs
- confectioners' sugar — Confectioners' sugar is very fine white sugar that is used for making icing and candy.
- congressional record — (in the US) the government journal that publishes all proceedings of Congress
- continental congress — the assembly of delegates from the North American rebel colonies held during and after the War of American Independence. It issued the Declaration of Independence (1776) and framed the Articles of Confederation (1777)
- convective discharge — the repulsion of ions of a gas by a highly charged body, creating a discernible wind.
- corresponding angles — a pair of nonadjacent angles, one interior and one exterior, on the same side of a transversal: these paired angles are equal if the lines cut by the transversal are parallel
- council-manager plan — (in the US) a system of local government with an elected legislative council and an appointed administrative manager
- creative imagination — the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses.
- crime against nature — Law. sodomy.
- criminal proceedings — action taken in a court to bring a criminal prosecution against someone
- cut the gordian knot — to find a quick, bold solution for a perplexing problem
- cylinder head gasket — (in an automobile engine) a gasket placed between the cylinder and the cylinder heads to avoid leaks of coolant and compression
- de facto segregation — racial, ethnic, or other segregation resulting from societal differences between groups, as socioeconomic or political disparity, without institutionalized legislation intended to segregate.
- declarative language — (language) Any relational language or functional language. These kinds of programming language describe relationships between variables in terms of functions or inference rules, and the language executor (interpreter or compiler) applies some fixed algorithm to these relations to produce a result. Declarative languages contrast with imperative languages which specify explicit manipulation of the computer's internal state; or procedural languages which specify an explicit sequence of steps to follow. The most common examples of declarative languages are logic programming languages such as Prolog and functional languages like Haskell. See also production system.
- decompartmentalizing — Present participle of decompartmentalize.
- demographic timebomb — a predicted shortage of school-leavers and consequently of available workers, caused by an earlier drop in the birth rate, resulting in an older workforce
- determinate cleavage — cell division in a fertilized or unfertilized egg resulting in daughter cells that are no longer able to produce a complete embryo by themselves
- dictionary catalogue — a catalogue of the authors, titles, and subjects of books in one alphabetical sequence
- differential pricing — a situation in which different prices are charged for the same product or service
- digital data service — (communications) (DDS) The class of service offered by telecommunications companies for transmitting digital data as opposed to voice.
- digital service unit — data service unit
- directional drilling — a method of drilling for oil in which the well is not drilled vertically, as when a number of wells are to be drilled from a single platform to reach different areas of an oil field
- directory user agent — (DUA) The software that accesses the X.500 Directory Service on behalf of the directory user. The directory user may be a person or another software element.
- disciplinary hearing — a hearing at which the conduct of a member of an organization, profession etc is examined and a punishment may be handed down
- disruptive discharge — the sudden, large increase in current through an insulating medium resulting from complete failure of the medium under electrostatic stress.
- ecological footprint — a mark left by the shod or unshod foot, as in earth or sand.
- electrocardiographic — Of or pertaining to an electrocardiogram (ECG) or electrocardiograph.
- electromagnetic pump — a device for pumping liquid metals by placing a pipe between the poles of an electromagnet and passing a current through the liquid metal
- electromagnetic unit — any unit that belongs to a system of electrical cgs units in which the magnetic constant is given the value of unity and is taken as a pure number
- electromagnetic wave — a wave of energy propagated in an electromagnetic field
- electronic signature — electronic proof of a person's identity
- electrophysiological — Of or pertaining to electrophysiology.
- first-cause argument — an argument for the existence of God, asserting the necessity of an uncaused cause of all subsequent series of causes, on the assumption that an infinite regress is impossible.
- fixed-rate financing — a loan system in which the amount paid back does not fluctuate according to interest rated
- flight data recorder — a recording device that records relevant data during an aircraft's flight
- florence nightingale — Florence ("the Lady with the Lamp") 1820–1910, English nurse: reformer of hospital conditions and procedures; reorganizer of nurse's training programs.
- freefall parachuting — a variety of parachuting in which the jumper manoeuvres in free fall before opening the parachute
- front-to-back engine — an engine in which the crankshaft is arranged front to back along the axis of the vehicle
- frosting on the cake — a sweet mixture, cooked or uncooked, for coating or filling cakes, cookies, and the like; icing.
- garcilaso de la vega — 1503?–36, Spanish poet.
- general practitioner — a medical practitioner whose practice is not limited to any specific branch of medicine or class of diseases. Abbreviation: G.P.
- general public virus — (software, legal) A pejorative name for some versions of the GNU project copyleft or General Public License (GPL), which requires that any tools or application programs incorporating copylefted code must be source-distributed on the same terms as GNU code. Thus it is alleged that the copyleft "infects" software generated with GNU tools, which may in turn infect other software that reuses any of its code.
- generative semantics — a theory of generative grammar holding that the deep structure of a sentence is equivalent to its semantic representation, from which the surface structure can then be derived using only one set of rules that relate underlying meaning and surface form rather than separate sets of semantic and syntactic rules.
- go like the clappers — to move extremely fast
- gorno-altai republic — a constituent republic of S Russia: mountainous, rising over 4350 m (14 500 ft) in the Altai Mountains of the south. Capital: Gorno-Altaisk. Pop: 202 900 (2002). Area: 92 600 sq km (35 740 sq miles)
- graphics accelerator — (graphics, hardware) Hardware (often an extra circuit board) to perform tasks such as plotting lines and surfaces in two or three dimensions, filling, shading and hidden line removal.
- gravimetric analysis — analysis by weight.
- great-circle sailing — sailing between two points more or less according to an arc of a great circle, in practice almost always using a series of rhumb lines of different bearings to approximate the arc, whose own bearing changes constantly unless it coincides with a meridian or the equator.