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

  • congressional record — (in the US) the government journal that publishes all proceedings of Congress
  • connector conspiracy — (business, standard)   The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension, other designers) to come up with products that don't fit with the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive interface devices. The term probably came into prominence with the appearance of the DEC KL-10, none of whose connectors matched anything else. The KL-10 Massbus connector was actually *patented* by DEC, who reputedly refused to licence the design, thus effectively locking out competition for the lucrative Massbus peripherals market. This policy was a source of frustration for the owners of dying, obsolescent disk and tape drives. A related phenomenon is the invention of new screw heads so that only Designated Persons, possessing the magic screwdrivers, can remove covers and make repairs or install options. Older Apple Macintoshes took this one step further, requiring not only a hex wrench but a specialised case-cracking tool to open the box. With the advent of more open-systems computing this term has fallen somewhat into disuse. Compare backward combatability.
  • conservation of mass — the principle that the total mass of any isolated system is constant and is independent of any chemical and physical changes taking place within the system
  • conservative baptist — a member of a Protestant denomination (Conservative Baptist Association of America) organized in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1948.
  • conservative judaism — a movement reacting against the radicalism of Reform Judaism, rejecting extreme change and advocating moderate relaxations of traditional Jewish law, by an extension of the process by which its adherents claim traditional Orthodox Judaism evolved
  • consumer electronics — computers and other electronic devices designed for private individuals as opposed to businesses
  • consumer price index — The consumer price index is an official measure of the rate of inflation within a country's economy. The abbreviation CPI is also used.
  • contact metamorphism — localized metamorphism resulting from the heat of an igneous intrusion.
  • continental congress — the assembly of delegates from the North American rebel colonies held during and after the War of American Independence. It issued the Declaration of Independence (1776) and framed the Articles of Confederation (1777)
  • continued proportion — geometric progression
  • continuity announcer — A continuity announcer is someone who introduces the next programme on a radio or television station.
  • controlled explosion — the deliberate detonation of an explosive device under strictly controlled circumstances
  • controlling interest — a quantity of shares in a business that is sufficient to ensure control over its direction
  • convective discharge — the repulsion of ions of a gas by a highly charged body, creating a discernible wind.
  • convergent evolution — the evolutionary development of a superficial resemblance between unrelated animals that occupy a similar environment, as in the evolution of wings in birds and bats
  • conversation stopper — a comment that is so shocking or boring that people stop talking
  • convertible currency — A convertible currency is a currency that can be bought and sold on the open market for other currencies.
  • coordination complex — one of a number of complex compounds in which an atom or group of atoms is bound to the central atom by a shared pair of electrons supplied by the coordinated group and not by the central atom
  • core gender identity — a person's inner sense of being male or female, usually developed during early childhood as a result of parental rearing practices and societal influences and strengthened during puberty by hormonal changes.
  • coroneted fruit dove — a brightly coloured bird of the Columbidae family with a distinctive marking on its head, found in Indonesia and Papua new Guinea
  • correctional officer — a prison guard
  • corresponding angles — a pair of nonadjacent angles, one interior and one exterior, on the same side of a transversal: these paired angles are equal if the lines cut by the transversal are parallel
  • council of ministers — the EU's most important decision-making body
  • council of the reich — the Reichsrat.
  • council-manager plan — (in the US) a system of local government with an elected legislative council and an appointed administrative manager
  • counter-inflationary — designed to reduce inflation
  • counter-intelligence — Counter-intelligence consists of actions that a country takes in order to find out whether another country is spying on it and to prevent it from doing so.
  • counterdemonstration — a demonstration that is held in reaction to another demonstration
  • counterproliferation — Action intended to prevent an increase or spread in the possession of nuclear weapons.
  • counterrevolutionary — Counterrevolutionary activities are activities intended to reverse the effects of a previous revolution.
  • counterrevolutionist — A counterrevolutionary.
  • craft apprenticeship — a period of training for a skilled trade in industry, such as for a plumber or electrician
  • craniosacral therapy — a form of therapy for various disorders in which the therapist manipulates the bones of the skull
  • creative imagination — the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses.
  • credit card terminal — A credit card terminal is a piece of equipment that you use to read the information on a credit card and charge a cost to it.
  • crime against nature — Law. sodomy.
  • crime and punishment — a novel (1866) by Feodor Dostoevsky.
  • criminal proceedings — action taken in a court to bring a criminal prosecution against someone
  • crisis of confidence — a serious loss of confidence
  • critical temperature — the temperature of a substance in its critical state. A gas can only be liquefied by pressure alone at temperatures below its critical temperature
  • cross someone's mind — to come suddenly or briefly to someone's mind
  • crossover distortion — distortion that sometimes occurs at a frequency (crossover frequency) at which a crossover network switches signals from one speaker to another.
  • crude oil evaluation — Crude oil evaluation is the process of assessing the chemical and physical properties of crude oil, against particular standards.
  • cut the gordian knot — to find a quick, bold solution for a perplexing problem
  • cylinder head gasket — (in an automobile engine) a gasket placed between the cylinder and the cylinder heads to avoid leaks of coolant and compression
  • cytosine arabinoside — cytarabine.
  • darkfield microscope — kind of microscope
  • data dictionary file — (database)   (DDF) A set of files describing the structure of a database file. DDFs define database tables and include information about file locations, field layouts and indexes. DDFs are the standard method for defining field and index characteristics for Btrieve files.
  • database transaction — (database)   A set of related changes applied to a database. The term typically implies that either all of the changes should be applied or, in the event of an error, none of them, i.e. the transaction should be atomic. Atomicity is one of the ACID properties a transaction can have, another is isolation - preventing interference between processes trying to access the database cocurrently. This is usually achieved by some form of locking - where one process takes exclusive control of a database table or row for the duration of the transaction, preventing other processes from accessing the locked data. The canonical example of a transaction is transferring money between two bank accounts by subtracting it from one and adding it to the other. Some relational database management systems require the user to explicitly start a transaction and then either commit it (if all the individual steps are successful) or roll it back (if there are any errors).
  • de facto segregation — racial, ethnic, or other segregation resulting from societal differences between groups, as socioeconomic or political disparity, without institutionalized legislation intended to segregate.
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