17-letter words containing c, o, t, r, a
- crampon technique — a climbing style that uses crampons
- cream of the crop — the best of a group
- creature comforts — Creature comforts are the things that you need to feel comfortable in a place, for example good food and modern equipment.
- creature of habit — If you say that someone is a creature of habit, you mean that they usually do the same thing at the same time each day, rather than doing new and different things.
- credit memorandum — a memorandum issued to an account allowing a credit or reducing a debit, especially one posted to a customer's account.
- criminal contempt — any seriously disrespectful act committed against the dignity or authority of a court.
- critical constant — any of three constants associated with the critical point of a pure element or compound.
- cross one's heart — to promise or pledge, esp by making the sign of a cross over one's heart
- cross-correlation — the correlation between two sequences of random variables in a time series
- cross-examination — to examine by questions intended to check a previous examination; examine closely or minutely.
- cross-lot bracing — bracing extending from one side of an excavation to the opposite to retain the earth on both sides.
- cross-pollination — the transfer of pollen from the anthers of one flower to the stigma of another flower by the action of wind, insects, etc
- cross-utilization — to make use of in an additional or different way.
- crown corporation — a corporation owned by the federal or a provincial government
- cryopreservations — the storage of blood or living tissues at extremely cold temperatures, often -196 degrees Celsius.
- cryptoclimatology — See under microclimatology.
- cryptocrystalline — (of rocks) composed of crystals that can be distinguished individually only by the use of a polarizing microscope
- cryptographically — In a cryptographic manner; using cryptography; for cryptographic purposes.
- customs brokerage — the work of a customs broker
- customs clearance — the permission to take goods into or out of a country once customs requirements have been satisfied
- cut a good figure — to appear or behave well
- cut a person dead — to ignore a person completely
- cut a poor figure — to appear or behave badly
- cutaneous quittor — a purulent infection of horses and other hoofed animals, characterized by an acute inflammation of soft tissue above the hoof and resulting in suppuration and sloughing of the skin and usually lameness.
- cyclooctatetraene — a colorless, flammable liquid cyclic hydrocarbon, C 8 H 8 , used in organic research.
- cypriot syllabary — a syllabic script in use on Cyprus in the first millennium b.c., used for the writing of Greek and of an unknown language.
- cytoarchitectonic — Of or pertaining to cytoarchitectonics (cytoarchitecture).
- cytomegaloviruses — Plural form of cytomegalovirus.
- cytotrophoblastic — Relating to, or containing, cytotrophoblasts.
- de facto standard — A widespread consensus on a particular product or protocol which has not been ratified by any official standards body, such as ISO, but which nevertheless has a large market share. The archetypal example of a de facto standard is the IBM PC which, despite is many glaring technical deficiencies, has gained such a large share of the personal computer market that it is now popular simply because it is popular and therefore enjoys fierce competition in pricing and software development.
- decellularization — (biology, medicine) The loss of cells from tissue.
- decriminalisation — (chiefly, British) Alternative form of decriminalization.
- decriminalization — to eliminate criminal penalties for or remove legal restrictions against: to decriminalize marijuana.
- dehistoricization — The process or result of dehistoricizing.
- dehydrochlorinate — to remove hydrogen chloride or chlorine and hydrogen from (a substance).
- delay instruction — delayed control-transfer
- denatured alcohol — ethanol rendered unfit for human consumption by the addition of a noxious substance, as in methylated spirits
- dendroclimatology — The science that uses dendrochronology to reconstruct historical climate conditions.
- despotic monarchy — absolute monarchy.
- dessert chocolate — cooking chocolate
- desynchronisation — (British spelling) Alternative form of desynchronization.
- desynchronization — to cause to indicate the same time, as one timepiece with another: Synchronize your watches.
- dialect geography — linguistic geography
- dictionary attack — an attempt to hack into a computer or network by submitting every word in a dictionary as a possible password
- dictionary-making — the work or activity of compiling dictionaries
- digital recording — a method of sound recording in which an input audio waveform is sampled at regular intervals, usually between 40,000 and 50,000 times per second, and each sample is assigned a numerical value, usually expressed in binary notation.
- dipterocarpaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Dipterocarpaceae, a family of trees chiefly native to tropical SE Asia, having two-winged fruits. Many species yield useful timber and resins
- disaster recovery — (business) (DR) Planning and implementation of procedures and facilities for use when essential systems are not available for a period long enough to have a significant impact on the business, e.g. when the head office is blown up. Disasters include natural: fire, flood, lightning, hurricane; hardware: power failure, component failure, head crash; software failure: bugs, resources; vandalism: arson, bombing, cracking, theft; data corruption or loss: human error, media failure; communications: computer network equipment, network storm, telephones; security: passwords compromised, computer virus; legal: change in legislation; personnel: unavailability of essential staff, industrial action. Companies need to plan for disaster: before: risk analysis, preventive measures, training; during: how should staff and systems respond; after: recovery measures, post mortem analysis. Hardware can usually be replaced and is usually insured. Software and data needs to be backed up off site. Alternative communication systems should be arranged in case of network failure or inaccessible premises, e.g. emergency telephone number, home working, alternative data center.
- disruptive action — action performed by protestors, workers, etc that causes the disruption of a service
- dissociated press — [Play on "Associated Press"; perhaps inspired by a reference in the 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon "What's Up, Doc?"] An algorithm for transforming any text into potentially humorous garbage even more efficiently than by passing it through a marketroid. The algorithm starts by printing any N consecutive words (or letters) in the text. Then at every step it searches for any random occurrence in the original text of the last N words (or letters) already printed and then prints the next word or letter. Emacs has a handy command for this. Here is a short example of word-based Dissociated Press applied to an earlier version of the Jargon File: wart: A small, crocky feature that sticks out of an array (C has no checks for this). This is relatively benign and easy to spot if the phrase is bent so as to be not worth paying attention to the medium in question. Here is a short example of letter-based Dissociated Press applied to the same source: window sysIWYG: A bit was named aften /bee't*/ prefer to use the other guy's re, especially in every cast a chuckle on neithout getting into useful informash speech makes removing a featuring a move or usage actual abstractionsidered interj. Indeed spectace logic or problem! A hackish idle pastime is to apply letter-based Dissociated Press to a random body of text and vgrep the output in hopes of finding an interesting new word. (In the preceding example, "window sysIWYG" and "informash" show some promise.) Iterated applications of Dissociated Press usually yield better results. Similar techniques called "travesty generators" have been employed with considerable satirical effect to the utterances of Usenet flamers; see pseudo.