16-letter words containing c, e, d
- rectus abdominis — a long flat muscle that extends along the whole length of both sides of the abdomen. It flexes the vertebral column, particularly the lumbar portion; it also tenses the anterior abdominal wall and assists in compressing the abdominal contents
- red-necked grebe — a large stocky grebe, Podiceps grisegena, of circumpolar regions having a dark neck: family Podicipedidae
- redundancy money — a sum of money given by an employer to an employee who has been made redundant: usually calculated on the basis of the employee's rate of pay and length of service
- refractive index — index of refraction.
- register dancing — Many older processor architectures suffer from a serious shortage of general-purpose registers. This is especially a problem for compiler-writers, because their generated code needs places to store temporaries for things like intermediate values in expression evaluation. Some designs with this problem, like the Intel 80x86, do have a handful of special-purpose registers that can be pressed into service, providing suitable care is taken to avoid unpleasant side effects on the state of the processor: while the special-purpose register is being used to hold an intermediate value, a delicate minuet is required in which the previous value of the register is saved and then restored just before the official function (and value) of the special-purpose register is again needed.
- reidentification — an act or instance of identifying; the state of being identified.
- reprocessed wool — wool cloth respun and rewoven from the raveled fibers of unused cloth, such as the waste or clippings from a garment factory
- research student — a student studying for a doctoral award, that is, a PhD or an MPhil
- residence permit — permission allowing someone to legally reside in a country
- residential care — the provision by a welfare agency of a home with social-work supervision for people who need more than just housing accommodation, such as children in care or mentally handicapped adults
- residual current — an electric current that continues to flow in a device, etc when there is no voltage supply, due to electrons emitted by heat, etc
- restricted class — a class of yachts that, although differing somewhat in design and rigging, are deemed able to race together because of conformity to certain standards.
- restricted stock — unregistered stock, as that issued privately as compensation to corporate executives subject to special conditions.
- revolving credit — credit automatically available up to a predetermined limit while payments are periodically made. Compare credit line (def 2).
- ribonucleic acid — RNA.
- richmond heights — a city in E Missouri, near St. Louis.
- ring-necked duck — a North American scauplike duck, Aythya collaris, having a chestnut ring around the neck.
- rochelle powders — (not in technical use) Seidlitz powders.
- rocket-propelled — using rocket power as the chief motive force.
- round lake beach — a town in NE Illinois.
- round the corner — close at hand
- run the blockade — to go past or through a blockade
- saddle stitching — to sew, bind, or decorate with a saddle stitch.
- safeguard clause — a clause in a contract, etc, that ensures the protection of something against problems, etc
- same-day service — (humour, operating system) An ironic term used to describe long response time, particularly with respect to MS-DOS system calls (which ought to require only a tiny fraction of a second to execute). Such response time is a major incentive for programmers to write programs that are not well-behaved. See also PC-ism.
- sangre de cristo — a mountain range in S Colorado and N New Mexico: a part of the Rocky Mountains. Highest peak, Blanca Peak, 14,390 feet (4385 meters).
- santiago de cuba — a region in Ecuador, E of the Andes: the border long disputed by Peru.
- scar tissue code — (humour, programming) Old code that is commented out but still included in the current release.
- scheduled castes — (in India) the official name given to the lower castes that are now protected by the government and offered special concessions.
- schlieren method — a method for detecting regions of differing densities in a clear fluid by photographing a beam of light passed obliquely through it.
- schneider trophy — a trophy for air racing between seaplanes of any nation, first presented by Jacques Schneider (1879–1928) in 1913; won outright by Britain in 1931
- school-age child — a child who is old enough to go to school
- schouten islands — a group of islands belonging to Papua New Guinea, in the Pacific Oceans, off the N coast of New Guinea.
- schweizerdeutsch — Schwyzertütsch.
- scottish borders — a council area in SE Scotland, on the English border: created in 1996, it has the same boundaries as the former Borders Region: it is mainly hilly, with agriculture (esp sheep farming) the chief economic activity. Administrative centre: Newtown St Boswells. Pop: 108 280 (2003 est). Area: 4734 sq km (1827 sq miles)
- scratch hardness — resistance of a material, as a stone or metal, to scratching by one of several other materials, the known hardnesses of which are assembled into a standard scale, as the Mohs' scale of minerals.
- sculpture garden — a garden that showcases sculptures in landscaped surroundings
- sebaceous glands — any of the cutaneous glands that secrete oily matter for lubricating hair and skin.
- second adventist — Adventist (def 1).
- second amendment — an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, guaranteeing the right to keep and bear arms as necessary to maintain a state militia.
- second childhood — senility; dotage.
- second intention — See under intention (def 5b).
- second messenger — any of various intracellular chemical substances, as cyclic AMP, that transmit and amplify the messages delivered by a first messenger to specific receptors on the cell surface.
- second world war — World War II.
- second-story man — a burglar who enters through an upstairs window.
- secondary accent — a stress accent weaker than primary accent but stronger than lack of stress.
- secondary cancer — a cancerous growth in some part of the body away from the site of the original tumour
- secondary colour — a colour formed by mixing two primary colours
- secondary growth — an increase in the thickness of the shoots and roots of a vascular plant as a result of the formation of new cells in the cambium.
- secondary market — the market that exists for an issue after large blocks of shares have been publicly distributed.