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20-letter words containing c, o, n, e

  • 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
  • constant de rebecque — Henri Benjamin [ahn-ree ban-zha-man] /ɑ̃ˈri bɛ̃ ʒaˈmɛ̃/ (Show IPA), (Benjamin Constant) 1767–1830, French statesman and author, born in Switzerland.
  • constituent assembly — A constituent assembly is a body of representatives that is elected to create or change their country's constitution.
  • 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.
  • contempt of congress — contempt of a U.S. Congressional body, as of an investigating committee, shown by a witness summoned or appearing before it.
  • context of situation — the totality of extralinguistic features having relevance to a communicative act.
  • context-free grammar — (grammar)   (CFG) A grammar where the syntax of each constituent (syntactic category or terminal symbol) is independent of the symbols occuring before and after it in a sentence. A context-free grammar describes a context-free language. Context-free grammars can be expressed by a set of "production rules" or syntactic rules. For example, a language with symbols "a" and "b" that must occur in unequal numbers can be represented by the CFG: S → U | V U → TaU | TaT | UaT V → TbV | TbT | VbT T → aTbT | bTaT | ε meaning the top-level category "S" consists of either a "U" or a "V" and so on. The special category "ε" represents the empty string. This grammar is context-free because each rule has a single symbol on its left-hand side.
  • 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)
  • contingency planning — planning for future events that seem less likely than others
  • contingent liability — a possible liability that is dependent on the outcome of a future event
  • continued proportion — geometric progression
  • continuing education — Continuing education is education for adults in a variety of subjects, most of which are practical, not academic.
  • continuing-education — adult education.
  • continuity announcer — A continuity announcer is someone who introduces the next programme on a radio or television station.
  • continuum hypothesis — the assertion that there is no set whose cardinality is greater than that of the integers and smaller than that of the reals
  • controlled explosion — the deliberate detonation of an explosive device under strictly controlled circumstances
  • controlled substance — a drug regulated by the Federal Controlled Substances Acts, including opiates, depressants, stimulants, and hallucinogens
  • 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.
  • conventional weapons — weapons which are not nuclear
  • 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.
  • cook someone's goose — If you cook someone's goose, you prevent their plans from succeeding.
  • 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
  • copulative asyndeton — a staccato effect produced by omitting copulative connectives between two or more items in a group, as in “Friends, Romans, countrymen.”.
  • 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
  • corporate governance — the balance of control between the stakeholders, managers, and directors of an organization
  • 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
  • cost-of-living index — a numerical scale by means of which cost-of-living levels can be compared with a base number
  • council of ministers — the EU's most important decision-making body
  • council of the reich — the Reichsrat.
  • council of the union — the legislature of the former Soviet Union and its successor states, consisting of an upper house (Soviet of the Union or Council of the Union) whose delegates are elected on the basis of population, and a lower house (Soviet of Nationalities or Council of Nationalities) whose delegates are elected to represent the various nationalities.
  • council-manager plan — (in the US) a system of local government with an elected legislative council and an appointed administrative manager
  • count one's chickens — If you say that someone is counting their chickens, you mean that they are assuming that they will be successful or get something, when this is not certain.
  • 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.
  • coupling coefficient — The coupling coefficient of a pair of coils is a measure of the magnetic effect passing between them.
  • covenant of warranty — warranty (def 2b).
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