19-letter words containing c, a, b, i, n
- building contractor — an individual or company that contracts for the construction of houses, etc
- buildings insurance — insurance which covers buildings
- business accounting — the keeping of detailed accounts relating to a business or businesses
- california bluebell — either of two plants, Phacelia campanularia or P. minor, of southern California, having ovate leaves and bell-shaped blue or purple flowers.
- california job case — a job case having sufficient spaces to contain both uppercase and lowercase letters and 37 additional characters of foundry type. Compare case2 (def 8).
- canterbury pilgrims — the pilgrims whose stories are told in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
- captain abstraction — The champion of the principles of abstraction and modularity, who protects unwary students on MIT's course 6.001 from the nefarious designs of Sergeant Spaghetticode and his vile concrete programming practices. See also spaghetti code.
- carbon dioxide snow — solid carbon dioxide, used as a refrigerant
- carbon steel piping — Carbon steel piping is pipes made of steel with carbon as the main alloying component, used for transporting fluids.
- cardbox for windows — (database) A database handling program, especially useful for scholars and librarians.
- caroline of ansbach — 1683–1737, wife of George II of Great Britain
- catch sb in the act — If you catch someone in the act, you discover them doing something wrong or committing a crime.
- cerebrospinal fluid — the clear colourless fluid in the spaces inside and around the spinal cord and brain
- chartered librarian — (in Britain) a librarian who has obtained a qualification from the Library Association in addition to a degree or diploma in librarianship
- circulating library — a small library circulated in turn to a group of schools or other institutions
- combination therapy — a therapy that combines two or more drugs, or two or more treatments
- connecticut warbler — a North American wood warbler, Oporornis agilis, olive-green above with a gray head and throat and yellow below.
- contagious abortion — brucellosis of domestic cattle, an infectious disease characterized by spontaneous abortion and caused by the bacterium Brucella abortus; Bang's disease.
- contributing factor — something that is partly responsible for a development or phenomenon
- coordination number — the number of coordinated species surrounding the central atom in a complex or crystal
- coronary thrombosis — A coronary thrombosis is the same as a coronary.
- cowboys and indians — a children's game in which players imitate the supposed behavior of cowboys and Indians in conflict, as in shooting, chasing, and capturing.
- creeping bent grass — a grass, Agrostis stolonifera, grown as a pasture grass in Europe and North America: roots readily from the stem
- cudgel one's brains — to think hard about a problem
- current liabilities — business liabilities maturing within a year
- deathbed confession — a confession that somebody makes just before he or she dies, usually relating to some long concealed crime or secret
- detective constable — a police officer who investigates crime and who is of the lowest rank
- devils-on-horseback — a savoury of prunes wrapped in bacon slices and served on toast
- differential backup — (operating system) A kind of backup that copies all files that have changed since the last full backup. Each differential backup will include all files in previous differential backups since the full backup so to restore a version of a file, you only need to search the full backup and the relevant differential backup. Some systems support differential backup by associating an "Archive" flag with each file and setting this flag whenever the file is modified to indicate that it should be included in the next backup. A differential backup does not change this flag, whereas an incremental backup resets it.
- dobsonian telescope — a relatively inexpensive Newtonian telescope, suitable for visual but not photographic use, in which the tube assembly slips freely in the lower base.
- electronic keyboard — a typewriter keyboard used to operate an electronic device such as a computer, word processor, etc
- emotional blackmail — a way of persuading someone to do something they do not want to do by making them feel guilty about it
- enabling technology — technology that enables the user to perform a task or to improve his or her overall performance: e.g. the internet
- exhibitionistically — In an exhibitionistic manner.
- financial ombudsman — any of five British ombudsmen: the Banking Ombudsman, set up in 1986 to investigate complaints from bank customers; the Building Society Ombudsman, set up in 1987 to investigate complaints from building society customers; the Insurance Ombudsman, set up in 1981 to investigate complaints by policyholders (since 1988 this ombudsman has also operated a Unit Trust Ombudsman scheme); the Investment Ombudsman set up in 1989 to investigate complaints by investors (the Personal Investment Authority Ombudsman is responsible for investigating complaints by personal investors); and the Pensions Ombudsman, set up in 1993 to investigate complaints regarding pension schemes
- foundation subjects — the subjects studied as part of the National Curriculum, including the compulsory core subjects
- functional database — (database, language) A database which uses a functional language as its query language. Databases would seem to be an inappropriate application for functional languages since, a purely functional language would have to return a new copy of the entire database every time (part of) it was updated. To be practically scalable, the update mechanism must clearly be destructive rather than functional; however it is quite feasible for the query language to be purely functional so long as the database is considered as an argument. One approach to the update problem would use a monad to encapsulate database access and ensure it was single threaded. Alternative approaches have been suggested by Trinder, who suggests non-destructive updating with shared data structures, and Sutton who uses a variant of a Phil Wadler's linear type system. There are two main classes of functional database languages. The first is based upon Backus' FP language, of which FQL is probably the best known example. Adaplan is a more recent language which falls into this category. More recently, people have been working on languages which are syntactically very similar to modern functional programming languages, but which also provide all of the features of a database language, e.g. bulk data structures which can be incrementally updated, type systems which can be incrementally updated, and all data persisting in a database. Examples are PFL [Poulovassilis&Small, VLDB-91], and Machiavelli [Ohori et al, ACM SIGMOD Conference, 1998].
- gigabits per second — (unit) (Gbps) A unit of information transfer rate equal to one billion bits per second. Note that, while a gigabit is defined as a power of two (2^30 bits), a gigabit per second is defined as a power of ten (10^9 bits per second, which is slightly less) than 2^30).
- giraldus cambrensis — literary name of Gerald de Barri. ?1146–?1223, Welsh chronicler and churchman, noted for his accounts of his travels in Ireland and Wales
- hang in the balance — to fasten or attach (a thing) so that it is supported only from above or at a point near its own top; suspend.
- have a bone to pick — to have grounds for a quarrel
- heptachlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) Either of twenty-four isomers of the polychlorinated biphenyl containing seven chlorine atoms.
- high-bush cranberry — cranberry bush
- honorable discharge — a discharge from military service of a person who has fulfilled obligations efficiently, honorably, and faithfully.
- hydrostatic balance — a balance for finding the weight of an object submerged in water in order to determine the upthrust on it and thus determine its relative density
- hydroxybenzoic acid — Hydroxybenzoic acid is the active ingredient in a number of drugs, for example, aspirin. Hydroxybenzoic acid is also used as a preservative.
- hydroxydaunorubicin — Doxorubicin.
- hyperbolic cosecant — a hyperbolic function that is the reciprocal of hyperbolic sine
- in the catbird seat — If you say that someone is in the catbird seat, you think that their situation is very good.
- incommensurableness — (rare) Incommensurability.