20-letter words containing c, o, u, r, t
- in-service education — training and education given to employed teachers throughout their career
- indian cucumber root — a North American plant, Medeola virginiana, of the lily family, having whorled leaves, nodding, greenish-yellow flowers, and an edible root.
- industrial democracy — control of an organization by the people who work for it, esp by workers holding positions on its board of directors
- industrial sociology — the sociological study of social relationships and social structures in business settings.
- inferior conjunction — the alignment of an inferior planet between the sun and the earth.
- instruction mnemonic — (programming) A word or acronym used in assembly language to represent a binary machine instruction operation code. Different processors have different instruction sets and therefore use a different set of mnemonics to represent them. E.g. ADD, B (branch), BLT (branch if less than), SVC, MOVE, LDR (load register).
- instruction prefetch — (architecture) A technique which attempts to minimise the time a processor spends waiting for instructions to be fetched from memory. Instructions following the one currently being executed are loaded into a prefetch queue when the processor's external bus is otherwise idle. If the processor executes a branch instruction or receives an interrupt then the queue must be flushed and reloaded from the new address. Instruction prefetch is often combined with pipelining in an attempt to keep the pipeline busy. By 1995 most processors used prefetching, e.g. Motorola 680x0, Intel 80x86.
- insulin-coma therapy — a former treatment for mental illness, especially schizophrenia, employing insulin-induced hypoglycemia as a method for producing convulsive seizures.
- isochronous transfer — isochronous
- james prescott joule — James Prescott, 1818–89, English physicist.
- job control language — a language used to construct statements that identify a particular job to be run and specify the job's requirements to the operating system under which it will run. Abbreviation: JCL.
- joint life insurance — life insurance covering two or more persons, the benefits of which are paid after the first person dies.
- jordan curve theorem — the theorem that the complement of a simple closed curve can be expressed as the union of two disjoint sets, each having as boundary the given curve.
- kentucky coffee tree — a tall North American tree, Gymnocladus dioica, of the legume family, the seeds of which (Kentucky coffee beans) were formerly used as a substitute for coffee beans.
- keratoconjunctivitis — inflammation of the cornea and conjunctiva.
- knock the tar out of — any of various dark-colored viscid products obtained by the destructive distillation of certain organic substances, as coal or wood.
- knock-down, drag-out — characterized by great violence, harshness, animosity, etc.
- lieutenant commander — a commissioned officer ranking next below a commander and next above a lieutenant.
- life-support machine — A life-support machine is the equipment that is used to keep a person alive when they are very ill and cannot breathe without help.
- light the touchpaper — to do something that will cause much anger or excitement
- linguistic geography — dialect geography.
- logarithmic function — a function defined by y = log bx, especially when the base, b, is equal to e, the base of natural logarithms.
- logical construction — anything referred to by an incomplete symbol capable of contextual definition.
- lonely hearts column — the part of a newspaper or magazine where lonely hearts ads appear
- macular degeneration — degeneration of the central portion of the retina, resulting in a loss of sharp vision.
- magical mystery tour — something exciting and mysterious; esp an exploration of a new place where somebody being shown or taken around does not know where exactly they will be going
- mail-order catalogue — a catalogue of goods you can buy from a particular company by mail order
- mary, queen of scots — family name Stuart. 1542–87, queen of Scotland (1542–67); daughter of James V of Scotland and Mary of Guise. She was married to Francis II of France (1558–60), her cousin Lord Darnley (1565–67), and the Earl of Bothwell (1567–71), who was commonly regarded as Darnley's murderer. She was forced to abdicate in favour of her son (later James VI of Scotland) and fled to England. Imprisoned by Elizabeth I until 1587, she was beheaded for plotting against the English crown
- member of the public — a member of the general population
- menstrual extraction — an abortion procedure involving suction aspiration of the uterine contents early in gestation, before the first missed menstrual period: sometimes performed later.
- microminiaturization — extreme miniaturization, especially of electronic equipment, with extensive use of integrated circuits.
- midcourse correction — a navigational correction made in the course of a ship, airplane, rocket, or space vehicle at some point between the beginning and end of the journey.
- miliary tuberculosis — tuberculosis in which the bacilli are spread by the blood from one point of infection, producing small tubercles in other parts of the body.
- molecular gastronomy — an approach to cooking in which a chef’s knowledge of physics, chemistry, and biology allows him or her to experiment with unusual flavour combinations and cooking techniques
- molecular geneticist — a specialist in the study of the molecular constitution of genes and chromosomes
- moreton bay chestnut — an Australian leguminous tree, Castanospermum australe, having thin smooth bark and yellow or reddish flowers: used in furniture manufacture
- mountain rescue team — a group of people who conduct search and rescue on a mountain, for example of someone who has fallen, got lost, etc
- multiplicative group — a group in which the operation of the group is multiplication.
- multipurpose vehicle — a large car, similar to a van, designed to carry up to eight passengers
- multistorey car park — a car park consisting of several levels
- music of the spheres — a music, imperceptible to human ears, formerly supposed to be produced by the movements of the spheres or heavenly bodies.
- net domestic product — the gross domestic product minus an allowance for the depreciation of capital goods
- net national product — the gross national product less allowance for depreciation of capital goods. Abbreviation: NNP.
- neuromusculoskeletal — (medicine) Describing the interactions between nerves, muscles and the skeleton.
- neuropsychiatrically — In terms of neuropsychiatry.
- neutral interconnect — Network infrastructure where network service providers can freely exchange traffic without policy restrictions. Examples are the GIX (Global Internet Exchange) at MAE-East (A Metropolitan Area Ethernet around Washington), and the Ebone (European Backbone). There is currently (November 1993) no UK Neutral Interconnect.
- next program counter — (architecture) (nPC) A register in a CPU that contains the address of the instruction to be executed next.
- nonaccidental injury — damage, such as a bruise, burn, or fracture, deliberately inflicted on a child or an old person
- not mince your words — If you say that someone does not mince their words, you mean that they speak in a forceful and direct way, especially when saying something unpleasant to someone.
- occupation franchise — the right of a tenant to vote in national and local elections