18-letter words containing c, y, s
- goya (y lucientes) — Fran‧ˈcis‧co Jo‧ˈsé‧ de (fʀɑnˈθiskɔhɔˈsɛ ðɛ) ; fränt hēsˈk^ōh^ōseˈ the) 1746-1828; Sp. painter
- grand canyon state — Arizona (used as a nickname).
- gravity escapement — an escapement, used especially in large outdoor clocks, in which the impulse is given to the pendulum by means of a weight falling through a certain distance.
- handyman's special — fixer-upper.
- heteroscedasticity — (statistics) The property of a series of random variables of 'not' every variable having the same finite variance.
- heteroskedasticity — Alternative spelling of heteroscedasticity.
- hidalgo y costilla — Miguel [mee-gel] /miˈgɛl/ (Show IPA), 1753–1811, Mexican priest, patriot, and revolutionist.
- highbush cranberry — a shrub, Viburnum trilobum, of northern North America, having broad clusters of white flowers and edible scarlet berries.
- histocompatibility — the condition of having antigenic similarities such that cells or tissues transplanted from one (the donor) to another (the recipient) are not rejected.
- historical geology — the branch of geology dealing with the history of the earth.
- homeowner's policy — a form of home insurance that provides compensation for damage, loss, or injury of property, personal belongings, or persons due to fire, theft, accidents, etc.
- honeysuckle family — the plant family Caprifoliaceae, typified by shrubs and woody vines having opposite leaves, clusters of usually flaring, narrow, tubular flowers, and various types of fruit, and including the elder, honeysuckle, snowberry, twinflower, and viburnum.
- honorary secretary — a unpaid person who is one of the managers of an organization
- hydrofluorocarbons — Plural form of hydrofluorocarbon.
- hypercholesteremia — Alternative spelling of hypercholesteraemia.
- hypermodern school — a style of chess characterized by control of the centre from the flanks
- hypernationalistic — a person devoted to nationalism.
- hypodermic syringe — a small glass piston or barrel syringe having a detachable, hollow needle for use in injecting solutions subcutaneously.
- hypogastric artery — iliac artery (def 3).
- hypophysis cerebri — the master endocrine gland, attached by a stalk to the base of the brain.
- hyposulfurous acid — an acid, H 2 S 2 O 4 , next in a series below sulfurous acid, known only in solution or in the form of its salts.
- hysterical reasons — (Or "hysterical raisins") A variant on the stock phrase "for historical reasons", indicating specifically that something must be done in some stupid way for backward compatibility, and moreover that the feature it must be compatible with was the result of a bad design in the first place. "All IBM PC video adaptors have to support MDA text mode for hysterical reasons." Compare bug-for-bug compatible.
- in company with sb — If you feel, believe, or know something in company with someone else, you both feel, believe, or know it.
- incommensurability — not commensurable; having no common basis, measure, or standard of comparison.
- inconsequentiality — of little or no importance; insignificant; trivial.
- indiscriminatingly — In an indiscriminating manner.
- interface analysis — (testing) A software test which checks the interfaces between program elements for consistency and adherence to predefined rules or axioms.
- investment company — a company that invests its funds in other companies and issues its own securities against these investments.
- involuntary muscle — muscle: contracts involuntarily
- isoamyl salicylate — a colorless, sometimes slightly yellow, synthetic oil, C 12 H 16 O 3 , having an orchidlike odor: used in perfumery.
- isometric joystick — (hardware) Any kind of joystick where the input depends on the force exerted rather than the position of the control, e.g. TrackPoint.
- john birch society — an ultraconservative organization, founded in December 1958 by Robert Welch, Jr., chiefly to combat alleged Communist activities in the U.S.
- jump discontinuity — a discontinuity of a function at a point where the function has finite, but unequal, limits as the independent variable approaches the point from the left and from the right. Compare jump (def 52).
- kentucky bluegrass — a grass, Poa pratensis, of the Mississippi valley, used for pasturage and lawns.
- lifecycle analysis — Lifecycle analysis is the consideration of all the energy and materials that are needed to make a product and to dispose of it.
- lincoln's birthday — February 12, a legal holiday in some states of the U.S., in honor of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.
- lipopolysaccharide — any of a class of polysaccharides to which lipids are attached.
- literary criticism — study and review of literature
- locally finite set — a collection of sets in a topological space in which each point of the space has a neighborhood that intersects a finite number of sets of the collection.
- locked-in syndrome — a condition in which a person is conscious but unable to move any part of the body except the eyes: results from damage to the brainstem
- logically possible — capable of being described without self-contradiction
- lonely hearts club — a club for people who are trying to find a lover or a friend
- long-stay car park — a car park (eg at an airport) where cars can be left for a long time
- magic switch story — Some years ago, I was snooping around in the cabinets that housed the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab's hardware hackers (no-one knows who). You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labelled in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words "magic" and "more magic". The switch was in the "more magic" position. I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side. It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. The computer instantly crashed. Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but nevertheless restored the switch to the "more magic" position before reviving the computer. A year later, I told this story to yet another hacker, David Moon as I recall. He clearly doubted my sanity, or suspected me of a supernatural belief in the power of this switch, or perhaps thought I was fooling him with a bogus saga. To prove it to him, I showed him the very switch, still glued to the cabinet frame with only one wire connected to it, still in the "more magic" position. We scrutinized the switch and its lone connection, and found that the other end of the wire, though connected to the computer wiring, was connected to a ground pin. That clearly made the switch doubly useless: not only was it electrically nonoperative, but it was connected to a place that couldn't affect anything anyway. So we flipped the switch. The computer promptly crashed. This time we ran for Richard Greenblatt, a long-time MIT hacker, who was close at hand. He had never noticed the switch before, either. He inspected it, concluded it was useless, got some diagonal cutters and diked it out. We then revived the computer and it has run fine ever since. We still don't know how the switch crashed the machine. There is a theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. But we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that the switch was magic. I still have that switch in my basement. Maybe I'm silly, but I usually keep it set on "more magic".
- magnetocrystalline — (physics) Describing the interaction between the magnetization and the crystal structure of a material.
- magnetogasdynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
- metabolic syndrome — Pathology. a group of medical conditions present simultaneously in a patient, as high blood pressure, low HDL cholesterol levels, and an excess of abdominal fat, that increases a person's risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Also called insulin resistance syndrome.
- methacrylate resin — an acrylic resin formed by polymerizing the esters or amides of methacrylic acid.
- microcrystallinity — The condition of being microcrystalline.
- money is no object — If you say that money is no object or distance is no object, you are emphasizing that you are willing or able to spend as much money as necessary or travel whatever distance is required.