20-letter words containing c, a, p, o
- father of the chapel — (in British trade unions in the publishing and printing industries) a shop steward
- feather in one's cap — one of the horny structures forming the principal covering of birds, consisting typically of a hard, tubular portion attached to the body and tapering into a thinner, stemlike portion bearing a series of slender, barbed processes that interlock to form a flat structure on each side.
- file descriptor leak — (programming) (Or "fd leak" /F D leek/) A kind of programming bug analogous to a core leak, in which a program fails to close file descriptors ("fd"s) after file operations are completed, and thus eventually runs out of them. See leak.
- fixed action pattern — a highly stereotyped pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a particular species.
- fixed-price contract — a contract in which the price is preset and invariable, regardless of the actual costs of production.
- flame-fusion process — Verneuil process.
- flat-plate collector — a type of solar collector consisting of a series of flat glass or plastic plates with black metal surfaces that absorb solar energy.
- friar minor capuchin — capuchin (def 4).
- frontenac et palluau — Comte de (Louis de Buade) 1620?–98, French governor of New France 1672–82, 1689–98.
- fulminating compound — a fulminate.
- function application — A function applied to (some of) its arguments. If it is not applied to all its argument then it is a "partial application". Application is usually written in the form f(x) but some languages such as command-line interpreters and many functional languages use juxtaposition: f x. Lisp places the parentheses around the whole application: (f x).
- gaff-topsail catfish — a sea catfish, Bagre marinus, occurring in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico from Cape Cod to Panama, and having the spine of the dorsal fin greatly prolonged and flattened.
- general practitioner — a medical practitioner whose practice is not limited to any specific branch of medicine or class of diseases. Abbreviation: G.P.
- get a real computer! — (jargon) A typical hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work done on a toy system or bitty box. The threshold for "real computer" rises with time. As of mid-1993 it meant multi-tasking, with a hard disk, and an address space bigger than 16 megabytes. At this time, according to GLS, computers with character-only displays were verging on "unreal". In 2001, a real computer has a one gigahertz processor, 128 MB of RAM, 20 GB of hard disk, and runs Linux.
- get one's hackles up — to become tense with anger; bristle
- glucosamine sulphate — a compound used in some herbal remedies and dietary supplements, esp to strengthen joint cartilage
- 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.
- group life insurance — a form of life insurance available to members of a group, typically employees of a company, under a master policy.
- hampton court palace — a royal palace in Hampton, London, built in 1515 by Cardinal Wolsey
- harmonic progression — a series of numbers the reciprocals of which are in arithmetic progression.
- have had one's chips — to be defeated, condemned to die, killed, etc
- helicopter parenting — a style of child rearing in which an overprotective mother or father discourages a child's independence by being too involved in the child's life: In typical helicopter parenting, a mother or father swoops in at any sign of challenge or discomfort.
- heteropolysaccharide — (carbohydrate) any polysaccharide formed from two or more different kinds of monosaccharide.
- hit the panic button — an alarm button for use in an emergency, as to summon help.
- household appliances — devices or machines, usually electrical, that are in your home and which you use to do jobs such as cleaning or cooking
- hudson's bay company — a company chartered in England in 1670 to carry on fur trading with the Indians in North America.
- human genome project — a federally funded U.S. scientific project to identify both the genes and the entire sequence of DNA base pairs that make up the human genome.
- hydraulic suspension — a system of motor-vehicle suspension using hydraulic members, often with hydraulic compensation between front and rear systems (hydroelastic suspension)
- hydrostatic pressure — Hydrostatic pressure is the pressure exerted by a liquid that depends on how deep it is.
- hyperadrenocorticism — Cushing's syndrome.
- hyperbolic cotangent — a hyperbolic function that is the ratio of cosh to sinh, being the reciprocal of tanh; coth
- hypercholesterolemia — the presence of an excessive amount of cholesterol in the blood.
- hyperhomocysteinemia — (medicine) The presence of an excessive amount of homocysteine in the blood.
- hypophosphorous acid — a colorless or yellowish, water-soluble, liquid, monobasic acid, H 3 PO 2 , having a sour odor, and used as a reducing agent.
- imported currantworm — the larva of any of several insects, as a sawfly, Nematus ribesii (imported currantworm) which infests and feeds on the leaves and fruit of currants.
- in the public domain — able to be discussed and examined freely by the general public
- income tax inspector — a person whose job is to assess individuals' income tax liability
- incomplete dominance — the appearance in a heterozygote of a trait that is intermediate between either of the trait's homozygous phenotypes.
- incorporated company — a legally constituted company
- independence of path — the property of a function for which the line integral has the same value along all curves between two specified points.
- indicated horsepower — the horsepower of a reciprocating engine as shown by an indicator record. Abbreviation: ihp, IHP.
- infectious hepatitis — hepatitis A.
- insulin-coma therapy — a former treatment for mental illness, especially schizophrenia, employing insulin-induced hypoglycemia as a method for producing convulsive seizures.
- jacopo della quercia — Jacopo Della [yah-kaw-paw del-lah] /ˈyɑ kɔ pɔ ˌdɛl lɑ/ (Show IPA), 1374?–1438, Italian sculptor.
- james prescott joule — James Prescott, 1818–89, English physicist.
- japanese honeysuckle — a climbing honeysuckle, Lonicera japonica, introduced into the eastern U.S. from Asia, having fragrant, white flowers that fade to yellow.
- judicial proceedings — any action involving or carried out by a court of law
- juno and the paycock — a play (1924) by Sean O'Casey.