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17-letter words containing c, h, a, n

  • arunachal pradesh — a state in NE India, formed in 1986 from the former Union Territory. Capital: Itanagar. Pop: 1 091 117 (2001). Area: 83 743 sq km (32 648 sq miles)
  • ascend the throne — to become king or queen
  • assistant teacher — a person who assists a teacher in their work or who is not yet fully qualified as a teacher
  • attachment theory — a set of concepts that explain the emergence of an emotional bond between an infant and primary caregiver and the way in which this bond affects the child’s behavioral and emotional development into adulthood. See also attachment (def 3a).
  • attraction sphere — centrosphere (sense 1)
  • audience research — research into the make-up and habits of the audience of a particular television or radio programme or network
  • australopithecine — any of various extinct apelike primates of the genus Australopithecus and related genera, remains of which have been discovered in southern and E Africa. Some species are estimated to be over 4.5 million years old
  • authority control — the establishment and maintainance of consistent forms of terms, as of names, subjects, and titles, to be used as headings in bibliographic records.
  • bachelor's button — any of several plants of a genus (Centaurea) of the composite family, that have scaly, vase-shaped bracts below the white, pink, or blue flowers; esp., the cornflower and knapweed
  • bachelor's-button — any of various plants with round flower heads, especially the cornflower.
  • back on the rails — If something is back on the rails, it is beginning to be successful again after a period when it almost failed.
  • backward chaining — (algorithm)   An algorithm for proving a goal by recursively breaking it down into sub-goals and trying to prove these until facts are reached. Facts are goals with no sub-goals which are therefore always true. Backward training is the program execution mechanism used by most logic programming language like Prolog. Opposite: forward chaining.
  • bacteriorhodopsin — a purple protein containing retinal and found in the plasma membrane of certain bacteria (genus Halobacterium): it directly supplies electrochemical energy from sunlight
  • bahia de cochinos — Spanish name of Bay of Pigs.
  • balance the books — do accounting
  • bald-faced hornet — any large, stinging paper wasp of the family Vespidae, as Vespa crabro (giant hornet) introduced into the U.S. from Europe, or Vespula maculata (bald-faced hornet or white-faced hornet) of North America.
  • barkhausen effect — the phenomenon of short, sudden changes in the magnetism of a ferromagnetic substance occurring when the intensity of the magnetizing field is continuously altered.
  • beat to the punch — to be quicker than (another) in doing something, as in striking a blow
  • behind one's back — without one's knowledge; secretly or deceitfully
  • blackcurrant bush — a bush of the blackcurrant plant
  • blow hot and cold — to vacillate
  • boatswain's chair — a seat consisting of a short flat board slung from ropes, used to support a person working on the side of a vessel or in its rigging
  • branch delay slot — delayed control-transfer
  • branch prediction — (processor, algorithm)   A technique used in some processors with instruction prefetch to guess whether a conditional branch will be taken or not and prefetch code from the appropriate location. When a branch instruction is executed, its address and that of the next instruction executed (the chosen destination of the branch) are stored in the Branch Target Buffer. This information is used to predict which way the instruction will branch the next time it is executed so that instruction prefetch can continue. When the prediction is correct (and it is over 90% of the time), executing a branch does not cause a pipeline break. Some later CPUs simply prefetch both paths instead of trying to predict which way the branch will go. An extension of the idea of branch prediction is speculative execution.
  • british cameroons — a former British trust territory of West Africa
  • british columbian — of or relating to British Columbia or its inhabitants
  • british-cameroons — German Kamerun. a region in W Africa: a German protectorate 1884–1919; divided in 1919 into British and French mandates.
  • buckingham palace — the London residence of the British sovereign: built in 1703, rebuilt by John Nash in 1821–36 and partially redesigned in the early 20th century
  • buncher resonator — See under Klystron.
  • cache consistency — cache coherency
  • can't be bothered — If you say that you can't be bothered to do something, you mean that you are not going to do it because you think it is unnecessary or because you are too lazy.
  • cannot choose but — to be obliged to
  • cape horn current — the part of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current flowing E at Cape Horn.
  • carbon disulphide — a colourless slightly soluble volatile flammable poisonous liquid commonly having a disagreeable odour due to the presence of impurities: used as an organic solvent and in the manufacture of rayon and carbon tetrachloride. Formula: CS2
  • carbon microphone — a microphone in which a diaphragm, vibrated by sound waves, applies a varying pressure to a container packed with carbon granules, altering the resistance of the carbon. A current flowing through the carbon is thus modulated at the frequency of the sound waves
  • carbonyl chloride — phosgene
  • carboxyhemoglobin — a compound formed in the blood when carbon monoxide occupies the positions on the hemoglobin molecule normally taken by oxygen, resulting in cellular oxygen starvation
  • cardiogenic shock — a type of shock caused by decreased cardiac output despite adequate blood volume, owing to a disease of the heart itself, as myocardial infarction, or any other factor that interferes with the filling or emptying of the heart.
  • cartoon character — one of the people or animals in an animated film
  • casting the runes — (jargon)   What a guru does when you ask him or her to run a particular program because it never works for anyone else; especially used when nobody can ever see what the guru is doing different from what J. Random Luser does. Compare incantation, runes, examining the entrails; also see the AI koan about Tom Knight.
  • castle in the air — a hope or desire unlikely to be realized; daydream
  • catapult-launched — (of aircraft) launched into the air by a device installed in warships
  • catastrophization — The act or process of catastrophizing.
  • catch one's death — to contract a severe cold
  • catcher resonator — See under Klystron.
  • cathedral ceiling — a high ceiling formed by or suggesting an open-timbered roof.
  • caudal anesthesia — anesthesia below the pelvis, induced by injecting an anesthetic into the sacral portion of the spinal canal.
  • celestial horizon — the line or circle that forms the apparent boundary between earth and sky.
  • cellophane noodle — a stringlike, transparent noodle used esp. in East Asian cooking
  • cellulose varnish — a varnish made from cellulose nitrate, used as a protective sealing film
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