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23-letter words containing c, a, l, i, s

  • consultant psychiatrist — a psychiatrist who has attained the rank of consultant
  • cost-of-living increase — a pay rise that is given because the cost of living has gone up
  • criminal justice system — the combination of courts and legal processes that deal with crime
  • criminal records bureau — (in England and Wales) a service offering employers and voluntary organizations access to police, health, and education records
  • cryptococcal meningitis — a form of meningitis resulting from opportunistic infection by a cryptococcus fungus, occurring in persons who are immunodeficient.
  • cut sb's umbilical cord — If you say that one person, organization, or country has cut its umbilical cord with another, you mean that they have done something that makes them more independent.
  • cyclohexylsulfamic acid — cyclamic acid.
  • cylindrical coordinates — three coordinates defining the location of a point in three-dimensional space in terms of its polar coordinates (r, θ) in one plane, usually the (x, y) plane, and its perpendicular distance, z, measured from this plane
  • d'entrecasteaux islands — a group of volcanic islands in the Pacific, off the SE coast of New Guinea: part of Papua New Guinea. Pop: 49 167 (1990 est). Area: 3141 sq km (1213 sq miles)
  • delayed stress reaction — a post-traumatic stress disorder occurring more than six months after the experience of a traumatic event.
  • dialectical materialism — the economic, political, and philosophical system of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that combines traditional materialism and Hegelian dialectic
  • diamondback rattlesnake — either of two large, highly venomous rattlesnakes of the genus Crotalus, having diamond-shaped markings on the back.
  • differential psychology — the branch of psychology dealing with the study of characteristic differences or variations of groups or individuals, especially through the use of analytic techniques and statistical methods.
  • digital subscriber line — (communications, protocol)   (DSL, or Digital Subscriber Loop, xDSL - see below) A family of digital telecommunications protocols designed to allow high speed data communication over the existing copper telephone lines between end-users and telephone companies. When two conventional modems are connected through the telephone system (PSTN), it treats the communication the same as voice conversations. This has the advantage that there is no investment required from the telephone company (telco) but the disadvantage is that the bandwidth available for the communication is the same as that available for voice conversations, usually 64 kb/s (DS0) at most. The twisted-pair copper cables into individual homes or offices can usually carry significantly more than 64 kb/s but the telco needs to handle the signal as digital rather than analog. There are many implementation of the basic scheme, differing in the communication protocol used and providing varying service levels. The throughput of the communication can be anything from about 128 kb/s to over 8 Mb/s, the communication can be either symmetric or asymmetric (i.e. the available bandwidth may or may not be the same upstream and downstream). Equipment prices and service fees also vary considerably. The first technology based on DSL was ISDN, although ISDN is not often recognised as such nowadays. Since then a large number of other protocols have been developed, collectively referred to as xDSL, including HDSL, SDSL, ADSL, and VDSL. As yet none of these have reached very wide deployment but wider deployment is expected for 1998-1999.
  • digital subscriber loop — Digital Subscriber Line
  • direct distance dialing — a telephone network service feature enabling customers to direct-dial their long-distance calls.
  • discrimination learning — a learning process in which an organism learns to react differently to different stimuli
  • dishonourable discharge — dismissal from the US armed forces by a court martial as a result of serious misconduct
  • disjunctive normal form — (DNF) A logical formula consisting of a disjunction of conjunctions where no conjunction contains a disjunction. E.g. the DNF of (A or B) and C is (A and C) or (B and C).
  • dissociate oneself from — to deny or repudiate any connection with
  • dollar (cost) averaging — see average (sense 11)
  • ecclesiastical calendar — a calendar based on the lunisolar cycle, used by many Christian churches in determining the dates for the movable feasts.
  • electron spin resonance — a technique for investigating paramagnetic substances by subjecting them to high-frequency radiation in a strong magnetic field. Changes in the spin of unpaired electrons cause radiation to be absorbed at certain frequencies
  • electronic mail address — (messaging)   (Usually "e-mail address") The string used to specify the source or destination of an electronic mail message. E.g. "[email protected]". The RFC 822 standard is probably the most widely used on the Internet. X.400 was once used in Europe and Canada. UUCP-style (bang path) addresses or other kinds of source route became virtually extinct in the 1990s. In the example above, "john" is the local part which is the name of a mailbox on the destination computer. If the sender and recipient use the same computer, or the same LAN, for electronic mail then the local part is usually all that is required. If they use different computers, e.g. they work at different companies or use different Internet service providers, then the "host part", e.g. "sales.acme.com" must be appended after an "@". This usually takes the form of a fully qualified domain name or, within a large organisation, it may be just the hostname part, e.g. "sales". The destination computer named by the host part is usually a server of some kind rather than an individual's workstation or PC. The user's mail is stored on the server and read later via client mail software running on the user's computer. Large organisations, such as universities will often set up a global alias directory which maps a simple user name such as "jsmith" to an address which contains more information such as "[email protected]". This hides the detailed knowledge of where the message will be delivered from the sender, making it much easier to redirect mail if a user leaves or moves to a different department for example.
  • electronic surveillance — use of electronic devices to spy, observe
  • electrostatic discharge — (hardware, testing)   (ESD) One kind of test that hardware usually has to pass to prove it is suitable for sale and use. The hardware must still work after is has been subjected to some level of electrostatic discharge. Some organisations have their own ESD requirements which hardware must meet before it will be considered for purchase. Different countries have different legal regulations about levels of ESD. See also Radio Frequency Interference, Electromagnetic Compatibility.
  • electrostatic generator — any device for producing a high voltage by building up a charge of static electricity
  • encapsulated postscript — (EPS) An extension of the PostScript graphics file format developed by Adobe Systems. EPS is used for PostScript graphics files that are to be incorporated into other documents. An EPS file includes pragmas (special PostScript comments) giving information such as the bounding box, page number and fonts used. On some computers, EPS files include a low resolution version of the PostScript image. On the Macintosh this is in PICT format, while on the IBM PC it is in TIFF or Microsoft Windows metafile format.
  • encephalitis lethargica — a form of encephalitis, or sleeping sickness, epidemic in the period from 1915 to 1926
  • entrance qualifications — academic requirements
  • experimental psychology — the scientific study of the individual behaviour of man and other animals, esp of perception, learning, memory, motor skills, and thinking
  • extracorporeal dialysis — the filtering of circulating blood through a semipermeable membrane in an apparatus
  • fendalton shopping cart — a four-wheel drive recreational vehicle
  • field effect transistor — a transistor in which the output current is varied by varying the value of an electric field within a region of the device. Abbreviation: FET.
  • field-effect transistor — a transistor in which the output current is varied by varying the value of an electric field within a region of the device. Abbreviation: FET.
  • firing on all cylinders — working or performing at full capability
  • first earl of leicester — Robert, 1st Earl of Leicester, 1532?–88, British statesman and favorite of Queen Elizabeth.
  • first strike capability — the ability to use nuclear missiles in an opening attack calculated to destroy the enemy's nuclear weapons
  • floating-point specrate — SPECrate_fp92
  • forest tent caterpillar — any of the larvae of several moths of the genus Malacosoma, which feed on the leaves of orchard and shade trees and live colonially in a tentlike silken web.
  • fractional distillation — the separation of volatile components of different boiling points in a mixture by the gradual increase of temperature and the separate collection of each component.
  • friedel-crafts reaction — a reaction for the synthesis of hydrocarbons and ketones by the alkylation or acylation of an aromatic compound in the presence of a catalyst, typically anhydrous aluminum chloride.
  • fully associative cache — (memory management)   A type of cache in which data from any address can be stored in any cache location. The whole address must be used as the tag (the value that identifies a block of data in the cache). All tags must be compared simultaneously (associatively) with the requested address and if one matches then its associated data is accessed. This requires an associative memory to hold the tags which makes this form of cache more expensive. It does however solve the problem of contention for cache locations (cache conflict) since a block need only be flushed when the whole cache is full and then the block to flush can be selected in a more efficient way. The alternatives are direct mapped cache or set associative cache.
  • function point analysis — (programming)   (FPA) A standard metric for the relative size and complexity of a software system, originally developed by Alan Albrecht of IBM in the late 1970s. Functon points (FPs) can be used to estimate the relative size and complexity of software in the early stages of development - analysis and design. The size is determined by identifying the components of the system as seen by the end-user: the inputs, outputs, inquiries, interfaces to other systems, and logical internal files. The components are classified as simple, average, or complex. All of these values are then scored and the total is expressed in Unadjusted FPs (UFPs). Complexity factors described by 14 general systems characteristics, such as reusability, performance, and complexity of processing can be used to weight the UFP. Factors are also weighted on a scale of 0 - not present, 1 - minor influence, to 5 - strong influence. The result of these computations is a number that correlates to system size. Although the FP metric doesn't correspond to any actual physical attribute of a software system (such as lines of code or the number of subroutines) it is useful as a relative measure for comparing projects, measuring productivity, and estimating the amount a development effort and time needed for a project. See also International Function Point Users Group.
  • functional requirements — (specification)   What a system should be able to do, the functions it should perform. This term is used at both the user requirements analysis and software requirements specifications phases in the software life-cycle. An example of a non-functional requirement is an initialisation sequence incorporated into the software that is specific to a given customer.
  • grant-maintained school — a school funded directly by central government
  • graphical kernel system — (graphics, standard)   (GKS) The widely recognised standard ANSI X3.124 for graphical input/output. GKS is worked on by the ISO/IEC group JTC1/SC24. It provides applications programmers with standard methods of creating, manipulating, and displaying or printing computer graphics on different types of computer graphics output devices. It provides an abstraction to save programmers from dealing with the detailed capabilities and interfaces of specific hardware. GKS defines a basic two-dimensional graphics system with: uniform input and output primitives; a uniform interface to and from a GKS metafile for storing and transferring graphics information. It supports a wide range of graphics output devices including such as printers, plotters, vector graphics devices, storage tubes, refresh displays, raster displays, and microfilm recorders.
  • have tickets on oneself — to be conceited
  • heterogeneous catalysis — Heterogeneous catalysis is catalysis in which the catalyst does not take part in the reaction that it increases.
  • hexagonal cross-section — If a kelly has a hexagonal cross-section, it has a surface area with six equal sides, when looked at as if has been sliced through.
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