20-letter words containing c, o, n, d, i, g
- lord high chancellor — the highest judicial officer of the British crown: law adviser of the ministry, keeper of the great seal, presiding officer in the House of Lords, etc.
- macular degeneration — degeneration of the central portion of the retina, resulting in a loss of sharp vision.
- magnetic declination — variation (def 8).
- magneto-optical disk — (hardware, storage) (MO) A plastic or glass disk coated with a compound (often TbFeCo) with special optical, magnetic and thermal properties. The disk is read by bouncing a low-intensity laser off the disk. Originally the laser was infrared, but frequencies up to blue may be possible giving higher storage density. The polarisation of the reflected light depends on the polarity of the stored magnetic field. To write, a higher intensity laser heats the coating up to its Curie point, allowing its magnetisation to be altered in a way that is retained when it has cooled. Although optical, they appear as hard drives to the operating system and do not require a special filesystem (they can be formatted as FAT, HPFS, NTFS, etc.). The initial 5.25" MO drives, introduced at the end of the 1980s, were the size of a full-height 5.25" hard drive (like in IBM PC XT) and the disks looked like a CD-ROM enclosed in an old-style cartridge In 2006, a 3.5" drive has the size of 1.44 megabyte diskette drive with disks about the size of a regular 1.44MB floppy disc but twice the thickness.
- magnetohydrodynamics — the branch of physics that deals with the motion of electrically conductive fluids, especially plasmas, in magnetic fields. Abbreviation: MHD.
- mail exchange record — (messaging) (MX Record) A DNS resource record type that says which SMTP server handles electronic mail for a particular domain. E.g. the MX record foo.co.uk. 1054 IN MX 10 mail.foo.co.uk. means that mail for an address like "[email protected]" should be sent to "mail.foo.co.uk". There can be several servers for a domain. The "10" is a priority - the server with the lowest number will be tried first.
- microwave background — a background of microwave electromagnetic radiation with a black-body spectrum discovered in 1965, understood to be the thermal remnant of the big bang with which the universe began
- nodding acquaintance — a slight, incomplete, or superficial knowledge (of something or someone): He had only a nodding acquaintance with Italian and didn't trust it to get him through the tour. Although we were neighbors for several years, we had only a nodding acquaintance.
- noncondensing engine — a steam engine releasing exhaust steam to the atmosphere rather than condensing it to hot feedwater.
- nonrepeating decimal — a decimal representation of any irrational number, having the property that no sequence of digits is repeated ad infinitum.
- object role modeling — (programming) (ORM) A conceptual modelling approach that pictures the application world as a set of objects that play roles (parts in relationships, which may be unary, binary or higher order). ORM provides both graphical and textual languages that enable models to be expressed naturally. For data modelling purposes, its graphical language is more expressive than ER or UML.
- ode on a grecian urn — a poem (1819) by Keats.
- operant conditioning — conditioning (def 1).
- operating conditions — Operating conditions are a set of conditions for operating a particular system or process.
- optical mark reading — the reading of marks by an optical device whereby the information can be stored in machine-readable form
- oxyacetylene welding — welding using an oxyacetylene burner
- perpendicular gothic — the style of Gothic architecture in England during the 14th and 15th centuries, characterized by tracery having vertical lines, a four-centred arch, and fan vaulting
- physiologic jaundice — a transitory jaundice that affects some infants for the first few days after birth.
- pledge of allegiance — a solemn oath of allegiance or fidelity to the U.S., beginning, “I pledge allegiance to the flag,” and forming part of many flag-saluting ceremonies in the U.S.
- postcode prescribing — the practice of prescribing more or less expensive and effective medical treatments to patients depending on where they live in a country, and which treatments their health board is willing and able to provide
- pound cost averaging — a method of accumulating capital by investing a fixed sum in a particular security at regular intervals, in order to achieve an average purchase price below the arithmetic average of the market prices on the purchase dates
- production agreement — a contract concerning the production or manufacture of something
- quantum bogodynamics — /kwon'tm boh"goh-di:-nam"iks/ A theory that characterises the universe in terms of bogon sources (such as politicians, used-car salesmen, TV evangelists, and suits in general), bogon sinks (such as taxpayers and computers), and bogosity potential fields. Bogon absorption causes human beings to behave mindlessly and machines to fail (and may also cause both to emit secondary bogons); however, the precise mechanics of bogon-computron interaction are not yet understood. Quantum bogodynamics is most often invoked to explain the sharp increase in hardware and software failures in the presence of suits; the latter emit bogons, which the former absorb.
- revolving presidency — a form of presidency in which the president and vice-president, or countries or bodies acting as such, switch roles after a set period and then back again and so on
- ruby-crowned kinglet — an olive-gray, American kinglet, Regulus calendula, the male of which has an erectile, ruby crest.
- schrodinger equation — the wave equation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. Also called Schrödinger wave equation. Compare wave equation (def 2).
- send someone packing — to dismiss or get rid of (someone) peremptorily
- string correspondent — stringer (def 6).
- synchronized skating — the art or sport of teams of up to twenty skaters holding onto each other and moving in patterns in time to music
- transcendental logic — (in Kantian epistemology) the study of the mind with reference to its perceptions of external objects and to the objective truth of such perceptions.
- unsaddling enclosure — the area at a racecourse where horses are unsaddled after a race and often where awards are given to owners, trainers, and jockeys
- wide-angle converter — a person or thing that converts.
- working-capital fund — a fund established to finance operating activities in an industrial enterprise.
- your marching orders — If you give someone their marching orders, you tell them that you no longer want or need them, for example as your employee or as your lover.