18-letter words containing a, t, u, e, n
- counterreformation — a reform movement to oppose a previous one
- countertherapeutic — Working against a therapy.
- countryside agency — (in England) a government agency that promotes the conservation and enjoyment of the countryside and aims to stimulate employment in rural areas
- 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.
- crude oil fraction — A crude oil fraction is a component of crude oil, which has its own particular molecular composition, weight, and boiling point.
- cultural awareness — Someone's cultural awareness is their understanding of the differences between themselves and people from other countries or other backgrounds, especially differences in attitudes and values.
- cultural universal — a cultural pattern extant in every known society.
- cumberland plateau — division of the W Appalachians, extending from S W.Va. to N Ala.
- 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.
- custodial sentence — a sentence given by a court that involves a term of imprisonment
- 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.
- cut-and-waste code — (humour, programming) Code that someone found online (e.g. in a blog) and copied and pasted into a product. The result is usually a lot of wasted time trying to track down obscure bugs from code that may have made sense in the original context but not in the new one. Also known as blog-driven development.
- de bruijn notation — (language) A variation of lambda notation for specifying functions using numbers instead of names to refer to formal parameters. A reference to a formal parameter is a number which gives the number of lambdas (written as \ here) between the reference and the lambda which binds the parameter. E.g. the function \ f . \ x . f x would be written \ . \ . 1 0. The 0 refers to the innermost lambda, the 1 to the next etc. The chief advantage of this notation is that it avoids the possibility of name capture and removes the need for alpha conversion.
- defense calculator — IBM 701
- deficiency account — an account summarizing the financial condition of an individual or company in danger of bankruptcy.
- definitive plumage — the plumage of a bird that, once attained, does not change significantly in color or pattern for the rest of the bird's life.
- deinstitutionalize — to discharge (a patient) as from a mental institution
- 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
- diabetes insipidus — a disorder of the pituitary gland causing excessive thirst and excretion of large quantities of dilute urine
- diamondback turtle — any edible North American terrapin of the genus Malaclemys, esp M. terrapin, occurring in brackish and tidal waters and having diamond-shaped markings on the shell: family Emydidae
- dietary supplement — a substance taken in addition to what you eat in order to promote health
- 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 signatures — digital signature
- dispatch documents — documents sent with a parcel, etc, detailing information such as contents, delivery address, etc
- distance education — education in which students receive instruction over the Internet, from a video, etc., instead of going to school.
- double achievement — a representation of the arms of a husband beside those of his wife such that a difference of rank between them is shown.
- drainpipe trousers — trousers with very narrow legs
- dramatic monologue — a poetic form in which a single character, addressing a silent auditor at a critical moment, reveals himself or herself and the dramatic situation.
- driver's education — high-school driving classes
- drug on the market — Pharmacology. a chemical substance used in the treatment, cure, prevention, or diagnosis of disease or used to otherwise enhance physical or mental well-being.
- dwarf storage unit — (humour) (DSU) An IBM term for a cupboard.
- dysfunctionalities — Plural form of dysfunctionality.
- east indian walnut — lebbek.
- eastern algonquian — a subgroup of the Algonquian language family, comprising the languages spoken aboriginally from Nova Scotia to northeastern North Carolina.
- electroacupuncture — the insertion into the body of one or more needles through which an electric current is passed
- electrostatic unit — any unit that belongs to a system of electrical cgs units in which the electric constant is given the value of unity and is taken as a pure number
- elementary student — primary school pupil
- engelbart, douglas — Douglas Engelbart
- entrepreneurialism — The spirit or state of acting in an entrepreneurial manner.
- epstein-barr virus — a virus belonging to the herpes family that causes infectious mononucleosis; it is also implicated in the development of Burkitt's lymphoma and Hodgkin's disease
- equinoctial circle — celestial equator
- equinoctial spring — either of the two highest spring tides that occur at the equinoxes
- equivalent circuit — an arrangement of simple electrical components that is electrically equivalent to a complex circuit and is used to simplify circuit analysis
- ethnomusicological — Relating to or pertaining to ethnomusicology.
- european community — an economic and political association of European States that came into being in 1967, when the legislative and executive bodies of the European Economic Community merged with those of the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Atomic Energy Community: subsumed into the European Union in 1993
- evolution strategy — (ES) A kind of evolutionary algorithm where individuals (potential solutions) are encoded by a set of real-valued "object variables" (the individual's "genome"). For each object variable an individual also has a "strategy variable" which determines the degree of mutation to be applied to the corresponding object variable. The strategy variables also mutate, allowing the rate of mutation of the object variables to vary. An ES is characterised by the population size, the number of offspring produced in each generation and whether the new population is selected from parents and offspring or only from the offspring. ES were invented in 1963 by Ingo Rechenberg, Hans-Paul Schwefel at the Technical University of Berlin (TUB) while searching for the optimal shapes of bodies in a flow.
- executable content — (operating system) Executable programs sent by one computer to another via a network. For example a Java applet is executable content. Usage: rare.
- executive chairman — the most senior internal position within a company, combining the duties of chairman and chief executive