18-letter words containing a, s, h, i
- children's crusade — a crusade to recover Jerusalem from the Saracens, undertaken in 1212 by thousands of French and German children who perished, were sold into slavery, or were turned back.
- chinese water deer — a small Chinese or Korean deer, Hydropotes inermis, having tusks and no antlers: introduced into England and France
- chinese watermelon — a tropical Asian vine, Benincasa hispida, of the gourd family, having a brown, hairy stem, large, solitary, yellow flowers, and white, melonlike fruit.
- christian brethren — Brother of the Christian Schools.
- christian brothers — a religious congregation of laymen founded in France in 1684 for the education of the poor
- christian democrat — a member or supporter of a Christian Democratic party
- christian endeavor — an organization of young people of various evangelical Protestant churches, formed in 1881 to promote Christian principles and service.
- christian reformed — of or relating to a Protestant denomination (Christian Reformed Church) organized in the U.S. in 1857 by groups that had seceded from the Dutch Reformed Church.
- christine de pisan — ?1364–?1430, French poet and prose writer, born in Venice. Her works include ballads, rondeaux, lays, and a biography of Charles V of France
- christmas shopping — shopping especially for Christmas presents, but also for Christmas food and drink, and all the other things required over the Christmas period.
- christmas stocking — A Christmas stocking is a long sock which children hang up on Christmas Eve. During the night, parents fill the stocking with small presents.
- chromatic semitone — the pitch difference between one note and its sharpened or flattened equivalent
- chronic alcoholism — long-term alcohol addiction
- chronostratigraphy — The branch of geology concerned with establishing the absolute ages of strata.
- circular dichroism — selective absorption of one of the two possible circular polarizations of light.
- citizenship papers — the document stating that a naturalized person has been formally declared a citizen
- claustrophobically — In a claustrophobic way.
- clean as a whistle — If you describe something as clean as a whistle, you mean that it is completely clean.
- closed scholarship — a scholarship for which only certain people, such as those from a particular school or with a particular surname, are eligible
- collection charges — the charges levied to cover expenses for the collection of debt
- 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
- community hospital — (in the US) a local hospital
- 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.
- congregate housing — a type of housing in which each individual or family has a private bedroom or living quarters but shares with other residents a common dining room, recreational room, or other facilities.
- 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.
- continental shield — any of the large, low-lying areas in the Earth's crust that are composed of Precambrian crystalline rocks
- continuation sheet — (in a document) a page that continues from the one before it, containing similar information
- conversation chair — an English chair of the 18th century designed to be straddled facing the back of the chair with the elbows resting on the crest rail: an English imitation of the voyeuse.
- cornucopian thesis — the belief that, as long as science and technology continue to advance, growth can continue for ever because these new advances create new resources
- corpus christi bay — a bay in S Texas, at the mouth of the Nueces River.
- cranial osteopathy — osteopathy that focuses on the cranium and the spine
- craniorachischisis — Lb pathology A defect of the neural tube in which both the brain and spinal cord are left open.
- creatine phosphate — phosphocreatine.
- crystal microphone — a microphone that uses a piezoelectric crystal to convert sound energy into electrical energy
- cytoarchitectonics — Cytoarchitecture.
- dagwood (sandwich) — a thick sandwich with a variety of fillings, often of apparently incompatible foods
- daisywheel printer — (printer) A kind of impact printer where the characters are arranged on the ends of the spokes of a wheel (resembling the petals on a daisy). The wheel (usually made of plastic) is rotated to select the character to print and then an electrically operated hammer mechanism bends the selected spoke forward slightly, sandwiching an ink ribbon between the character and the paper, as in a typewriter. One advantage of this arrangement over that of a typewriter is that different wheels may be inserted to produce different typefaces.
- danish west indies — the former possession of Denmark in the W Lesser Antilles, sold to the US in 1917
- deanthropomorphism — the ridding of philosophy or religion of anthropomorphic beliefs and doctrines.
- dechristianization — The act of dechristianizing; the systematic removal of Christianity or Christian elements.
- deep-sea fisherman — a person who takes part in deep-sea fishing
- depth-first search — (algorithm) A graph search algorithm which extends the current path as far as possible before backtracking to the last choice point and trying the next alternative path. Depth-first search may fail to find a solution if it enters a cycle in the graph. This can be avoided if we never extend a path to a node which it already contains. Opposite of breadth first search. See also iterative deepening.
- destruct mechanism — a mechanism that causes the destruction of a rocket or missile when activated
- devil's paintbrush — a perennial European hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum) with leafless flower stalks bearing a cluster of orange-red heads: now a common weed in N U.S. and Canada
- diatomaceous earth — an unconsolidated form of diatomite
- didaskaleinophobia — The fear of going to school.
- digital humanities — (used with a singular verb) the study of literature, philosophy, etc., as facilitated by computer technology or digital media: Digital humanities uses data analysis to find patterns in large bodies of text. the set of methodologies used in such scholarship.
- digital switchover — the process of changing the method of transmitting television from analogue to digital format
- dihydrotachysterol — a white, crystalline, water-insoluble sterol, C 28 H 46 O, derived from ergosterol: used chiefly in the treatment of hypoparathyroidism.
- diphosphoglycerate — an ester of phosphoric acid and glyceric acid that occurs in the blood and that promotes the release of hemoglobin-bound oxygen.