17-letter words containing c, o, u
- thread escutcheon — a raised metal rim around a keyhole.
- three-course meal — A three-course meal is a meal that consists of three parts served one after the other.
- to come up trumps — If you say that someone came up trumps, you mean that they did something successfully, often when they were not expected to.
- to get psyched up — to prepare mentally
- to lick your lips — If you lick your lips, you move your tongue across your lips as you think about or taste something pleasant.
- to push your luck — If you say that someone is pushing their luck, you think they are taking a bigger risk than is sensible, and may get into trouble.
- to risk your neck — If you say that someone is risking their neck, you mean they are doing something very dangerous, often in order to achieve something.
- to run its course — If something runs its course or takes its course, it develops naturally and comes to a natural end.
- to show your face — If you show your face somewhere, you go there and see people, although you are not welcome, are rather unwilling to go, or have not been there for some time.
- top-security wing — a wing of a prison, mental hospital, etc that has a very high level of precautions against escape
- topological group — a set that is a group and a topological space and for which the group operation and the map of an element to its inverse are continuous functions.
- torricellian tube — a vertical glass tube partly evacuated and partly filled with mercury, the height of which is used as a measure of atmospheric pressure
- touch a raw nerve — If you say that you have touched a nerve or touched a raw nerve, you mean that you have accidentally upset someone by talking about something that they feel strongly about or are very sensitive about.
- transfer function — The transfer function of a circuit is the ratio of the response to the input.
- trapdoor function — a function defined from data by means of a mathematical procedure in such a way that it is easy to obtain the function when the data are known, but when the procedure and data are not known it becomes very difficult to determine the original data: used in cryptography, where the data are the characters of the plain text, or message, and the trapdoor function is the cryptogram.
- triboluminescence — luminescence produced by friction, usually within a crystalline substance.
- tropical aquarium — an aquarium designed for the maintenance and breeding of tropical fish and kept at a suitably warm temperature.
- trouble came back — (jargon) (TCB) An IBM term for an intermittent or difficult-to-reproduce problem that has failed to respond to neglect or shotgun debugging. Compare heisenbug.
- trucial sheikdoms — an independent federation in E Arabia, formed in 1971, now comprising seven emirates on the S coast (formerly, Pirate Coast or Trucial Coast) of the Persian Gulf, formerly under British protection: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al-Qaiwain, Ras al-Khaimah (joined 1972), and Fujairah. About 32,300 sq. mi. (83,657 sq. km). Capital: Abu Dhabi. Abbreviation: U.A.E.
- ts'ao hsueh-ch'in — (Ts'ao Chan) c1717–63, Chinese novelist: author of The Dream of the Red Chamber.
- turbosupercharger — (formerly) a turbocharger.
- turn of the screw — a short novel (1898) by Henry James.
- turn on the charm — If someone turns on the charm, they behave in a way that seems very friendly but which you think is insincere, often in order to obtain something or deceive someone.
- turn-down service — In a hotel, a turn-down service is the preparation of a room for a guest to sleep in by slightly turning back the comforter on the bed, turning down the lights, and so on.
- ultraconservative — extremely conservative, especially in politics.
- ultramicrobalance — a balance for weighing precisely, to a hundredth of a microgram or less, minute quantities of material.
- unclassified road — a road that has not been given a grade because it is of a basic standard
- uncle tom's cabin — an antislavery novel (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
- uncomfortableness — causing discomfort or distress; painful; irritating.
- uncompassionately — having or showing compassion: a compassionate person; a compassionate letter.
- uncomprehendingly — to understand the nature or meaning of; grasp with the mind; perceive: He did not comprehend the significance of the ambassador's remark.
- unconformity trap — An unconformity trap is a hydrocarbon trap where the closure is made by an unconformity (= a formation of rock layers which represents a gap in the geological record).
- unconscientiously — governed by conscience; controlled by or done according to one's inner sense of what is right; principled: She's a conscientious judge, who does not let personal prejudices influence her decisions.
- unconventionalist — not conventional; not bound by or conforming to convention, rule, or precedent; free from conventionality: an unconventional artist; an unconventional use of material.
- unconventionality — disregard for convention; the state or quality of being inconsistent with customs, rules, etc.; originality.
- uncooperativeness — working or acting together willingly for a common purpose or benefit.
- under the counter — (of merchandise) sold clandestinely.
- under-the-counter — (of merchandise) sold clandestinely.
- undercompensation — to compensate or pay less than is fair, customary, or expected.
- unify corporation — (company) Developers of the Unify relational database. At one time, before Sybase, they were a competitor of Oracle, et al.
- unipalm group plc — (company) A company floated in March 1994.
- unix to unix copy — (networking, messaging) (uucp) A Unix utility program and protocol that allows one Unix system to send files to another via a serial line which may be a cable going directly from one machine's serial port to another's or may involve a modem at each end of a telephone line. Software is also available to allow uucp to work over Ethernet though there are better alternatives in this case, e.g. FTP or rcp for file transfer, SMTP for electronic mail or NNTP for news. The term is now also used to describe the large international network which uses UUCP to pass Usenet news and electronic mail, also known as "UUCPNET". See also cu, uuencode.
- unofficial strike — a strike that is not approved by the strikers' trade union
- unreconstructible — not capable of being reconstructed.
- unselfconsciously — in an unselfconscious manner
- upper paleolithic — See under Paleolithic.
- utopian socialism — (sometimes initial capital letter) an economic system based on the premise that if capital voluntarily surrendered its ownership of the means of production to the state or the workers, unemployment and poverty would be abolished.
- vacuum aspiration — menstrual extraction.
- vacuum extraction — applying suction to a baby's head during birth to help it emerge
- vernacularization — to translate into the natural speech peculiar to a people.