21-letter words containing c, o, e, r, i, t
- bird-voiced tree frog — a frog, Hyla avivoca, of the southern U.S., having a birdlike, whistling call.
- boiling-water reactor — a nuclear reactor using water as coolant and moderator, steam being produced in the reactor itself: enriched uranium oxide cased in zirconium is the fuel
- box-office attraction — something or something that persuades people to buy tickets for a film or play
- breath-of-life packet — (XEROX PARC) An Ethernet packet that contains bootstrap code, periodically sent out from a working computer to infuse the "breath of life" into any computer on the network that has crashed. Computers depending on such packets have sufficient hardware or firmware code to wait for (or request) such a packet during the reboot process. See also dickless workstation. The notional "kiss-of-death packet", with a function complementary to that of a breath-of-life packet, is recommended for dealing with hosts that consume too many network resources. Though "kiss-of-death packet" is usually used in jest, there is at least one documented instance of an Internet subnet with limited address-table slots in a gateway computer in which such packets were routinely used to compete for slots, rather like Christmas shoppers competing for scarce parking spaces.
- british north america — (formerly) Canada or its constituent regions or provinces that formed part of the British Empire
- butterfly common lisp — A parallel version of Common LISP for the BBN Butterfly computer.
- byte-code interpreter — (software) A program that executes a byte code program. An example is the Java Virtual Machine.
- cantilever foundation — a building foundation supporting its load partly or wholly upon cantilevers.
- cartesian coordinates — a system of representing points in space in terms of their distance from a given origin measured along a set of mutually perpendicular axes. Written (x,y,z) with reference to three axes
- category merchandiser — A category merchandiser is a person whose job is to maintain stocks, manage displays and promote sales of a certain product category such as footwear.
- catherine of braganza — 1638–1705, wife of Charles II of England, daughter of John IV of Portugal
- caviar to the general — a thing appealing only to a highly cultivated taste: Hamlet II, ii
- central european time — the standard time adopted by Western European countries one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, corresponding to British Summer Time
- central limit theorem — any of several theorems stating that the sum of a number of random variables obeying certain conditions will assume a normal distribution as the number of variables becomes large.
- certificate authority — (cryptography, body) (CA or "Trusted Third Party") An entity (typically a company) that issues digital certificates to other entities (organisations or individuals) to allow them to prove their identity to others. A Certificate Authority might be an external company such as VeriSign that offers digital certificate services or they might be an internal organisation such as a corporate MIS department. The Certificate Authority's chief function is to verify the identity of entities and issue digital certificates attesting to that identity. The process uses public key cryptography to create a "network of trust". If I want to prove my identity to you, I ask a CA (who you trust to have verified my identity) to encrypt a hash of my signed key with their private key. Then you can use the CA's public key to decrypt the hash and compare it with a hash you calculate yourself. Hashes are used to decrease the amount of data that needs to be transmitted. The hash function must be cryptographically strong, e.g. MD5.
- certificate of origin — a document stating the name of the country that produced a specified shipment of goods: often required before importation of goods
- character recognition — Character recognition is a process which allows computers to recognize written or printed characters such as numbers or letters and to change them into a form that the computer can use.
- characteristic vector — a vector for which there exists a scalar such that the value of the vector under a given transformation is equal to the scalar times the vector.
- charity commissioners — (in Britain) members of a commission constituted to keep a register of charities and control charitable trusts
- chief warrant officer — a senior-ranking warrant officer in various armed forces
- chinese forget-me-not — an eastern Asian plant, Cynoglossum amabile, of the borage family, having lance-shaped leaves and clustered, showy, blue, pink, or white flowers.
- chinese water torture — a form of torture in which water is made to drip for a long period of time onto a victim's forehead to drive him insane
- christmas decorations — decorations of different kinds appropriate to Christmas, such as tinsel, candles, images of angels, etc.
- circle of declination — hour circle.
- civil rights movement — campaign for human freedoms
- class-relation method — (programming) A design technique based on the concepts of object-oriented programming and the Entity-Relationship model from the French company Softeam.
- clement of alexandria — Saint. original name Titus Flavius Clemens. ?150–?215 ad, Greek Christian theologian: head of the catechetical school at Alexandria; teacher of Origen. Feast day: Dec 5
- clerk to the justices — (in England) a legally qualified person who sits in court with lay justices to advise them on points of law
- clostridium difficile — Clostridium difficile is a bacterium that causes severe diarrhoea. It is commonly found in hospitals. C.diff is also used.
- collective bargaining — When a trade union engages in collective bargaining, it has talks with an employer about its members' pay and working conditions.
- collimator viewfinder — a type of viewfinder in a camera
- collins street farmer — a businessman who invests in farms, land, etc
- combination principle — Ritz combination principle.
- come in from the cold — to come out of exile, isolation, etc.; resume an active role
- comfortably-furnished — containing comfortable furniture
- commercial fertilizer — fertilizer manufactured chemically, as distinguished from natural fertilizer, as manure.
- commercial television — television companies which make money by selling advertising
- commercial translator — (language) An English-like pre-COBOL language for business data processing.
- committal proceedings — a preliminary hearing in a magistrates' court to decide if there is a case to answer
- committing magistrate — a magistrate who decides if there is enough evidence for a case to proceed
- common carotid artery — the part of a carotid artery between its origin and its point of division into branches.
- communications server — (operating system) IBM's rebranding of ACF.
- companionate marriage — a proposed system of trial marriage in which the couple would postpone having children and could be divorced by mutual consent, until a final decision to stay married is reached
- comparative philology — comparative linguistics.
- comparative statement — a financial statement with figures arranged in two or more parallel columns, each column representing a fiscal year or other period, used to compare performance between periods.
- compensation neurosis — an unconscious attempt to retain physical or psychological symptoms of illness when some advantage may be obtained (distinguished from malingering).
- complete metric space — (theory) A metric space in which every sequence that converges in itself has a limit. For example, the space of real numbers is complete by Dedekind's axiom, whereas the space of rational numbers is not - e.g. the sequence a[0]=1; a[n_+1]:=a[n]/2+1/a[n].
- completing the square — a method, usually of solving quadratic equations, by which a quadratic expression, as x 2 − 4 x + 3, is written as the sum or difference of a perfect square and a constant, x 2 − 4 x + 4 + 3 − 4 = (x − 2) 2 − 1, by addition and subtraction of appropriate constant terms.
- composition of forces — the combination, by vector algebra, of two or more forces into a single equivalent force (the resultant)
- computer aided design — (application) (CAD) The part of CAE concerning the drawing or physical layout steps of engineering design. Often found in the phrase "CAD/CAM" for ".. manufacturing".