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14-letter words containing c, o, r, n, a

  • rowing machine — an exercise machine having a mechanism with two oarlike handles, foot braces, and a sliding seat, allowing the user to go through the motions of rowing in a racing shell.
  • royal canadian — in the service of the Canadian federal government and the British monarch: Royal Canadian Air Force; Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
  • royal coachman — a type of artificial fly, used chiefly for trout and salmon.
  • rsa encryption — (cryptography, algorithm)   A public-key cryptosystem for both encryption and authentication, invented in 1977 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman. Its name comes from their initials. The RSA algorithm works as follows. Take two large prime numbers, p and q, and find their product n = pq; n is called the modulus. Choose a number, e, less than n and relatively prime to (p-1)(q-1), and find its reciprocal mod (p-1)(q-1), and call this d. Thus ed = 1 mod (p-1)(q-1); e and d are called the public and private exponents, respectively. The public key is the pair (n, e); the private key is d. The factors p and q must be kept secret, or destroyed. It is difficult (presumably) to obtain the private key d from the public key (n, e). If one could factor n into p and q, however, then one could obtain the private key d. Thus the entire security of RSA depends on the difficulty of factoring; an easy method for factoring products of large prime numbers would break RSA.
  • sacred monster — a celebrity whose eccentricities or indiscretions are easily forgiven by admirers.
  • saint francois — a river in S Quebec, Canada, flowing generally W to the St. Lawrence River. 165 miles (266 km) long.
  • sandwich board — two connected posters or signboards that hang in front of and behind a person and usually bear some advertisement, notice, exhortation, or the like.
  • sansculotterie — the characteristics of sansculottes
  • sarcocarcinoma — carcinosarcoma.
  • scaremongering — a person who creates or spreads alarming news.
  • sclerotization — the state of being sclerotized.
  • sconcheon arch — an archway that includes the sconcheons of a door or window.
  • scorpion grass — either of two small Old World plants, Myosotis sylvatica or M. scorpioides, of the borage family, having a light-blue flower commonly regarded as an emblem of constancy and friendship.
  • scotch furnace — ore hearth.
  • scratch monkey — (humour)   As in "Before testing or reconfiguring, always mount a scratch monkey", a proverb used to advise caution when dealing with irreplaceable data or devices. Used to refer to any scratch volume hooked to a computer during any risky operation as a replacement for some precious resource or data that might otherwise get trashed. This term preserves the memory of Mabel, the Swimming Wonder Monkey, star of a biological research program at the University of Toronto. Mabel was not (so the legend goes) your ordinary monkey; the university had spent years teaching her how to swim, breathing through a regulator, in order to study the effects of different gas mixtures on her physiology. Mabel suffered an untimely demise one day when a DEC engineer troubleshooting a crash on the program's VAX inadvertently interfered with some custom hardware that was wired to Mabel. It is reported that, after calming down an understandably irate customer sufficiently to ascertain the facts of the matter, a DEC troubleshooter called up the field circus manager responsible and asked him sweetly, "Can you swim?" Not all the consequences to humans were so amusing; the sysop of the machine in question was nearly thrown in jail at the behest of certain clueless droids at the local "humane" society. The moral is clear: When in doubt, always mount a scratch monkey. A corespondent adds: The details you give are somewhat consistent with the version I recall from the Digital "War Stories" notesfile, but the name "Mabel" and the swimming bit were not mentioned, IIRC. Also, there's a very detailed account that claims that three monkies died in the incident, not just one. I believe Eric Postpischil wrote the original story at DEC, so his coming back with a different version leads me to wonder whether there ever was a real Scratch Monkey incident.
  • scrutinization — to examine in detail with careful or critical attention.
  • scsi initiator — (hardware)   A device that begins a SCSI transaction by issuing a command to another device (the SCSI target), giving it a task to perform. Typically a SCSI host adapter is the initiator but targets may also become initiators.
  • second chamber — the parliament of the Netherlands, consisting of an upper chamber (First Chamber) and a lower chamber (Second Chamber)
  • second reading — the stage in the consideration of a legislative bill that provides an opportunity for debate and amendment.
  • secondary beam — a beam of particles of one kind selected from the group of particles produced when a beam of particles from an accelerator (primary beam) strikes a target.
  • secondary cell — storage cell.
  • secondary gain — any advantage, as increased attention, disability benefits, or release from unpleasant responsibilities, obtained as a result of having an illness (distinguished from primary gain).
  • secondary road — a road less important than a main road or highway.
  • secondary wall — the innermost part of a plant cell wall, deposited after the wall has ceased to increase in surface area.
  • secondary wave — a transverse earthquake wave that travels through the interior of the earth and is usually the second conspicuous wave to reach a seismograph.
  • secularization — to make secular; separate from religious or spiritual connection or influences; make worldly or unspiritual; imbue with secularism.
  • securitization — the use of such securities as eurobonds to enable investors to lend directly to borrowers with a minimum of risk but without using banks as intermediaries
  • semi-nocturnal — active at night (opposed to diurnal): nocturnal animals.
  • serbo-croatian — a Slavic language spoken in Serbia and Croatia, usually written with Cyrillic letters in Serbia but with Roman letters in Croatia.
  • sericitization — the process of transforming into sericite
  • serodiscordant — pertaining to a relationship with one HIV-positive partner and one HIV-negative partner.
  • servomechanism — an electronic control system in which a hydraulic, pneumatic, or other type of controlling mechanism is actuated and controlled by a low-energy signal.
  • shower curtain — waterproof sheet around a shower
  • smart sanction — a sanction intended to affect only a particular area of a country's activities or economy
  • social control — Sociology. the enforcement of conformity by society upon its members, either by law or by social pressure.
  • social drinker — a person who drinks alcoholic beverages usually in the company of others and is in control of his or her drinking.
  • social network — a network of friends, colleagues, and other personal contacts: Strong social networks can encourage healthy behaviors.
  • social sharing — the activity of sharing photos, videos, links, etc., on a social-media website, within an interactive application, or through other online channels.
  • socratic irony — pretended ignorance in discussion.
  • solar calendar — a calendar whose dates are based on the position of the earth and its proximity to the sun
  • solar constant — the average rate at which radiant energy is received from the sun by the earth, equal to 1.94 small calories per minute per square centimeter of area perpendicular to the sun's rays, measured at a point outside the earth's atmosphere when the earth is at its mean distance from the sun.
  • somali current — a current of the Indian Ocean, flowing northward along the coast of Somalia in summer and southwestward the rest of the year.
  • sorting tracks — the part of a railroad yard used for the final sorting of cars from a classification yard.
  • soul-searching — the act or process of close and penetrating analysis of oneself, to determine one's true motives and sentiments.
  • sound archives — official records or files (as in a library) of sound recordings, broadcasts, or performances, esp those from radio programmes
  • south american — a continent in the S part of the Western Hemisphere. About 6,900,000 sq. mi. (17,871,000 sq. km).
  • south carolina — a state in the SE United States, on the Atlantic coast. 31,055 sq. mi. (80,430 sq. km). Capital: Columbia. Abbreviation: SC (for use with zip code), S.C.
  • southern ocean — that part of the Indian Ocean south of Australia
  • spinthariscope — an instrument that detects ionizing radiation by picking up sparks of light from alpha particles.
  • spironolactone — a steroid, C 2 4 H 3 2 O 4 S, used in combination with other drugs as a diuretic and antihypertensive.
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