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20-letter words containing c, e, i, t

  • christopher strachey — (person)   Professor of Computation at Oxford, England, born 1916, died May 1975. He invented the term "currying". See also: General Purpose Macro-generator.
  • chromatic aberration — a defect in a lens system in which different wavelengths of light are focused at different distances because they are refracted through different angles. It produces a blurred image with coloured fringes
  • clay-pigeon shooting — the activity of shooting clay pigeons
  • clean bill of health — a good report of one's physical condition
  • clean-bill-of-health — a certificate, carried by a ship, attesting to the presence or absence of infectious diseases among the ship's crew and at the port from which it has come.
  • cleansing department — the department of a local authority that collects refuse
  • clear air turbulence — turbulent air, not associated with a storm, that affects the flight of aircraft
  • clear-air turbulence — atmospheric turbulence, sometimes severe, occurring in air devoid of clouds or other visible indicators that turbulence might be present. Abbreviation: CAT.
  • climbing bittersweet — bittersweet (def 4).
  • climbing-bittersweet — Also called woody nightshade. a climbing or trailing plant, Solanum dulcamara, of the nightshade family, having small, violet, star-shaped flowers with a protruding yellow center and scarlet berries.
  • clinical thermometer — a finely calibrated thermometer for determining the temperature of the body, usually placed under the tongue, in the armpit, or in the rectum
  • co-operative society — In Britain, a co-operative society is a commercial organization with several shops in a particular district. Customers can join this organization and get a share of its profits.
  • coalition government — a government containing members of two or more political parties
  • cocktail shaker sort — (algorithm)   A bi-directional bubble sort. Passes alternate between ascending through array indexes, pushing the largest item to the bottom; and descending through array indexes, pushing the smallest item to the top.
  • cognitive dissonance — an uncomfortable mental state resulting from conflicting cognitions; usually resolved by changing some of the cognitions
  • cognitive psychology — the psychological study of higher mental processes, including thinking and perception
  • coincident indicator — an economic indicator, as gross national product, that typically fluctuates in correlation with the total economy.
  • collective agreement — a negotiated agreement, which is not enforceable at law, between an employer and employees' representatives, covering rates of pay or terms and conditions of employment, or both
  • collective ownership — ownership by a group for the benefit of members of that group
  • college of education — a professional training college for teachers
  • collegiate institute — (in certain provinces) a large secondary school with an academic, rather than vocational, emphasis
  • come out in the wash — If you say that something will come out in the wash, you mean that people will eventually find out the truth about it.
  • commissioning editor — a person who commissions authors to write books and magazine articles
  • committee of inquiry — (in parliament) a group set up to investigate something
  • commonwealth hackish — (jargon)   Hacker jargon as spoken outside the US, especially in the British Commonwealth. It is reported that Commonwealth speakers are more likely to pronounce truncations like "char" and "soc", etc., as spelled (/char/, /sok/), as opposed to American /keir/ and /sohsh/. Dots in newsgroup names (especially two-component names) tend to be pronounced more often (so soc.wibble is /sok dot wib'l/ rather than /sohsh wib'l/). The prefix meta may be pronounced /mee't*/; similarly, Greek letter beta is usually /bee't*/, zeta is usually /zee't*/, and so forth. Preferred metasyntactic variables include blurgle, "eek", "ook", "frodo", and "bilbo"; "wibble", "wobble", and in emergencies "wubble"; "banana", "tom", "dick", "harry", "wombat", "frog", fish, and so on and on (see foo). Alternatives to verb doubling include suffixes "-o-rama", "frenzy" (as in feeding frenzy), and "city" (examples: "barf city!" "hack-o-rama!" "core dump frenzy!"). Finally, note that the American terms "parens", "brackets", and "braces" for (), [], and {} are uncommon; Commonwealth hackish prefers "brackets", "square brackets", and "curly brackets". Also, the use of "pling" for bang is common outside the United States. See also attoparsec, calculator, chemist, console jockey, fish, go-faster stripes, grunge, hakspek, heavy metal, leaky heap, lord high fixer, loose bytes, muddie, nadger, noddy, psychedelicware, plingnet, raster blaster, RTBM, seggie, spod, sun lounge, terminal junkie, tick-list features, weeble, weasel, YABA, and notes or definitions under Bad Thing, barf, bum, chase pointers, cosmic rays, crippleware, crunch, dodgy, gonk, hamster, hardwarily, mess-dos, nibble, proglet, root, SEX, tweak and xyzzy.
  • commune with oneself — to think; ponder
  • communication system — (communications)   A system or facility for transfering data between persons and equipment. The system usually consists of a collection of individual communication networks, transmission systems, relay stations, tributary stations and terminal equipment capable of interconnection and interoperation so as to form an integrated whole. These individual components must serve a common purpose, be technically compatible, employ common procedures, respond to some form of control and generally operate in unison.
  • communication theory — information theory.
  • comparative judgment — any judgment about whether there is a difference between two or more stimuli
  • comparative religion — a field of study seeking to derive general principles from a comparison and classification of the growth and influence of various religions.
  • compartmentalisation — Alternative form of compartmentalization.
  • compartmentalization — to divide into categories or compartments.
  • compensating balance — Also, compensated balance, compensation balance. a balance wheel in a timepiece, designed to compensate for variations in tension in the hair spring caused by changes in temperature.
  • compensation culture — a culture in which people are very ready to go to law over even relatively minor incidents in the hope of gaining compensation
  • compensation package — the sum of compensation awarded in a legal case
  • complaints procedure — a prescribed method of lodging a complaint to an institution
  • complete unification — (programming)   W.P. Weijland's name for unification without occur check.
  • composite photograph — a photograph formed by superimposing two or more separate photographs
  • compression ignition — ignition of engine fuel by the heat of air compressed in the cylinders into which the fuel is introduced.
  • computability theory — (mathematics)   The area of theoretical computer science concerning what problems can be solved by any computer. A function is computable if an algorithm can be implemented which will give the correct output for any valid input. Since computer programs are countable but real numbers are not, it follows that there must exist real numbers that cannot be calculated by any program. Unfortunately, by definition, there isn't an easy way of describing any of them! In fact, there are many tasks (not just calculating real numbers) that computers cannot perform. The most well-known is the halting problem, the busy beaver problem is less famous but just as fascinating.
  • computer programming — the activity or profession of writing computer programs
  • computer typesetting — a system for the high-speed composition of type by a device driven by punched paper tape or magnetic tape that has been processed by a computer
  • condensation nucleus — nucleus (def 5).
  • conditioned response — a response that is transferred from the second to the first of a pair of stimuli. A well-known Pavlovian example is salivation by a dog when it hears a bell ring, because food has always been presented when the bell has been rung previously
  • conditioned stimulus — a stimulus to which an organism has learned to make a response by classical conditioning
  • conductive education — an educational system, developed in Hungary by András Petö, in which teachers (conductors) teach children and adults with motor disorders to function independently, by guiding them to attain their own goals in their own way
  • confectioners' sugar — Confectioners' sugar is very fine white sugar that is used for making icing and candy.
  • conference committee — a committee made up of members from both houses whose task is to eliminate any differences between versions of legislation on the same subject passed in the different chambers
  • conflict of interest — a conflict between one's obligation to the public good and one's self-interest, as in the case of a public officeholder who owns stock in a company seeking government contracts
  • conformal projection — a map projection in which angles formed by lines are preserved: a map made using this projection preserves the shape of any small area.
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