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19-letter words containing c, a, t, s

  • as sick as a parrot — If you say that you feel as sick as a parrot, you feel very disappointed about something.
  • asbestos cork award — (humour)   Once, long ago at MIT, there was a flamer so consistently obnoxious that another hacker designed, had made, and distributed posters announcing that said flamer had been nominated for the "asbestos cork award". (Any reader in doubt as to the intended application of the cork should consult the etymology under flame.) Since then, it is agreed that only a select few have risen to the heights of bombast required to earn this dubious dignity - but there is no agreement on *which* few.
  • assistant principal — a person who assists a principal in their work
  • assistant secretary — a person who assists a secretary in their work
  • associate professor — An associate professor is a college teacher who ranks above an assistant professor but below a professor.
  • associative storage — a storage device in which the information is identified by content rather than by an address
  • asymmetric war-fare — warfare in which opposing groups or nations have unequal military resources, and the weaker opponent uses unconventional weapons and tactics, as terrorism, to exploit the vulnerabilities of the enemy.
  • at bus architecture — Industry Standard Architecture
  • at one's discretion — as one wishes
  • at sb's convenience — If something is arranged to happen at your convenience, it happens at a time which is most suitable for you.
  • atmospheric braking — a technique of reentry in which the vehicle is maneuvered in the upper atmosphere so as to lose velocity by utilizing drag without overheating.
  • attachment disorder — an emotional and behavioral disorder arising from a failure to form a strong bond with one’s primary caregiver in early childhood and affecting one’s social relationships in later childhood and adulthood. See also attachment (def 3a).
  • attendance register — an official list of people who are present at an institution such as a school
  • attractive nuisance — Law. a doctrine of tort law under which a person who creates or permits to exist on his or her land a dangerous condition attractive to children, as an unfenced swimming pool, is liable for their resulting injuries, even though the injured are trespassers.
  • autoerotic asphyxia — asphyxia caused by intentionally strangling oneself while masturbating in order to intensify the orgasm through reduced oxygen flow to the brain.
  • avogadro's constant — the number of atoms or molecules in a mole of a substance, equal to 6.022 52 × 1023
  • axiomatic semantics — (theory)   A set of assertions about properties of a system and how they are effected by program execution. The axiomatic semantics of a program could include pre- and post-conditions for operations. In particular if you view the program as a state transformer (or collection of state transformers), the axiomatic semantics is a set of invariants on the state which the state transformer satisfies. E.g. for a function with the type: sort_list :: [T] -> [T] we might give the precondition that the argument of the function is a list, and a postcondition that the return value is a list that is sorted. One interesting use of axiomatic semantics is to have a language that has a finitely computable sublanguage that is used for specifying pre and post conditions, and then have the compiler prove that the program will satisfy those conditions. See also operational semantics, denotational semantics.
  • bacillary dysentery — shigellosis.
  • backward somersault — a somersault performed in a backward direction with the legs leading the rest of the body
  • balance of payments — A country's balance of payments is the difference, over a period of time, between the payments it makes to other countries for imports and the payments it receives from other countries for exports.
  • ballistocardiograph — an instrument that records the slight recoil of the body, while on a special bed, caused by the contractions of the heart: used to measure cardiac pumping power and the elasticity of the aorta
  • banker's acceptance — a draft or bill of exchange drawn on a bank and accepted by it
  • barometric pressure — atmospheric pressure as indicated by a barometer
  • basic object system — (programming)   (BOS) A C-callable library that implements the notion of object and which uses Tcl as its interpreter for interpreted methods (you can have "compiled" methods in C, and mix compiled and interpreted methods in the same object, plus lots more). You can subclass and mix in existing objects using BOS to extend, among other things, the set of tk widgets. BOS is a class-free object system, also called a prototype-based object system; it is modelled loosely on the Self system from Stanford University. Version 1.31 by Sean Levy <[email protected]>.
  • batterie de cuisine — cooking utensils collectively; pots and pans, etc
  • be burnt to a crisp — If something is burnt to a crisp, it is completely burnt.
  • behavioral genetics — an interdisciplinary field studying the effects of genetics and hereditary factors on animal and human behavior.
  • belgian east africa — a former Belgian trust territory in Africa, also (1924–62) Ruanda-Urundi, now the independent countries of Rwanda and Burundi.
  • bicarbonate of soda — Bicarbonate of soda is a white powder which is used in baking to make cakes rise, and also as a medicine for your stomach.
  • bill of particulars — an itemized statement of claims or counterclaims provided to the opposing party of a lawsuit
  • binocular disparity — the small differences in the positions of the parts of the images falling on each eye that results when each eye views the scene from a slightly different position; these differences make stereoscopic vision possible
  • black forest gateau — a chocolate sponge cake containing morello cherries and whipped cream, with a topping of chocolate icing
  • blackstrap molasses — the molasses remaining after the maximum quantity of sugar has been extracted from the raw material
  • blue stellar object — any of a class of blue celestial objects, at one time thought to be stars, that do not emit appreciable radio waves. Abbreviation: BSO.
  • bracket abstraction — (compiler)   An algorithm which turns a term into a function of some variable. The result of using bracket abstraction on T with respect to variable v, written as [v]T, is a term containing no occurrences of v and denoting a function f such that f v = T. This defines the function f = (\ v . T). Using bracket abstraction and currying we can define a language without bound variables in which the only operation is monadic function application. See combinator.
  • british east africa — the former British possessions of Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika, and Zanzibar, before their independence in the 1960s
  • british west africa — the former British possessions of Nigeria, The Gambia, Sierra Leone, and the Gold Coast, and the former trust territories of Togoland and Cameroons
  • bug tracking system — (programming)   (BTS) A system for receiving and filing bugs reported against a software project, and tracking those bugs until they are fixed. Most major software projects have their own BTS, the source code of which is often available for use by other projects. Well known BTSs include GNATS, Bugzilla, and Debbugs.
  • business accounting — the keeping of detailed accounts relating to a business or businesses
  • buster brown collar — a medium-sized, starched collar with rounded edges, lying flat on the shoulders, worn by women and girls.
  • cable-stayed bridge — a type of suspension bridge in which the supporting cables are connected directly to the bridge deck without the use of suspenders
  • cairngorm mountains — a mountain range of NE Scotland: part of the Grampians. Highest peak: Ben Macdui, 1309 m (4296 ft); designated a national park in 2003
  • camouflage passport — a passport from a non-existent country intended to conceal the bearer's true nationality (from hijackers, kidnappers, etc)
  • cannot help oneself — to be the victim of circumstances, a habit, etc.
  • canterbury pilgrims — the pilgrims whose stories are told in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
  • cape-disappointment — Cape, a cape in SW Washington state, projecting into the Pacific Ocean on the N of the mouth of the Columbia River.
  • 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.
  • captain of industry — You can refer to the owners or senior managers of industrial companies as captains of industry.
  • captains courageous — a novel (1897) by Rudyard Kipling.
  • carbon steel piping — Carbon steel piping is pipes made of steel with carbon as the main alloying component, used for transporting fluids.
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