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20-letter words containing c

  • at someone's service — ready to serve or cooperate with someone
  • at the crack of dawn — If you say that someone does something at the crack of dawn, you are emphasizing that they do it very early in the morning.
  • at two hours' notice — with notification only two hours in advance
  • atmospheric pressure — Atmospheric pressure is the pressure of the atmosphere on the Earth's surface.
  • attachment parenting — a style of child rearing aimed at developing a strong emotional bond between the child and primary caregiver. See also attachment (def 3a).
  • attacks as a service — (security, legal)   A kind of cybercrime as a service in which the service provider performs denial of service attacks on behalf of others for money.
  • attendance allowance — (in Britain) a tax-free noncontributory welfare benefit for people over 65 years old who are so severely disabled that they need frequent attention or continual supervision for a period of six months or more
  • attic salt (or wit) — graceful, piercing wit
  • automobile insurance — Automobile insurance is insurance coverage for cars.
  • axiomatic set theory — (theory)   One of several approaches to set theory, consisting of a formal language for talking about sets and a collection of axioms describing how they behave. There are many different axiomatisations for set theory. Each takes a slightly different approach to the problem of finding a theory that captures as much as possible of the intuitive idea of what a set is, while avoiding the paradoxes that result from accepting all of it, the most famous being Russell's paradox. The main source of trouble in naive set theory is the idea that you can specify a set by saying whether each object in the universe is in the "set" or not. Accordingly, the most important differences between different axiomatisations of set theory concern the restrictions they place on this idea (known as "comprehension"). NBG (von Neumann-Bernays-Goedel) set theory sort of allows comprehension for all formulae without restriction, but distinguishes between two kinds of set, so that the sets produced by applying comprehension are only second-class sets. NBG is exactly as powerful as ZF, in the sense that any statement that can be formalised in both theories is a theorem of ZF if and only if it is a theorem of ZFC. MK (Morse-Kelley) set theory is a strengthened version of NBG, with a simpler axiom system. It is strictly stronger than NBG, and it is possible that NBG might be consistent but MK inconsistent. ML ("Modern Logic") is to NF as NBG is to ZF. (Its name derives from the title of the book in which Quine introduced an early, defective, form of it). It is stronger than ZF (it can prove things that ZF can't), but if NF is consistent then ML is too.
  • babylonian captivity — the exile of the Jews in Babylonia from about 586 to about 538 bc
  • baccalaureate sermon — a farewell sermon addressed to a graduating class in some U.S. colleges and schools.
  • back the wrong horse — to bet on a horse that loses the race
  • back-of-the-envelope — (of a plan, calculation, etc) composed or performed quickly and without detailed analysis or research
  • background radiation — low-intensity radiation from, for example, small amounts of radioisotopes in soil, air, building materials, etc
  • backward and forward — If someone or something moves backward and forward, they move repeatedly first in one direction and then in the opposite direction.
  • backwards compatible — backward compatibility
  • bacteriochlorophylls — Plural form of bacteriochlorophyll.
  • baggage reclaim area — the place in an airport to which passengers go to recover their baggage after a flight
  • balanced three-phase — A balanced three-phase voltage or current is one in which the size of each phase is the same, and the phase angles of the three phases differ from each other by 120 degrees.
  • ballet-wrap cardigan — a cardigan with wrapover fronts which are fastened with wraparound ties
  • ballistic trajectory — the path of an unpowered object, as a missile, moving only under the influence of gravity and possibly atmospheric friction and with its surface providing no significant lift to alter the course of flight.
  • barrack-room ballads — a volume of poems (1892) by Rudyard Kipling, including Gunga Din, Danny Deever, and Mandalay.
  • basal cell carcinoma — a common and usually curable skin cancer that arises from epithelial cells and rarely metastasizes: often associated with overexposure to sunlight.
  • basal metabolic rate — the rate at which heat is produced by the body at rest, 12 to 14 hours after eating, measured in kilocalories per square metre of body surface per hour
  • basic encoding rules — (protocol, standard)   (BER) ASN.1 encoding rules for producing self-identifying and self-delimiting transfer syntax for data structures described in ASN.1 notations. BER is an self-identifying and self-delimiting encoding scheme, which means that each data value can be identified, extracted and decoded individually. Huw Rogers once described BER as "a triumph of bloated theory over clean implementation". He also criticises it as designed around bitstreams with arbitrary boundaries between data which can only be determined at a high level. Documents: ITU-T X.690, ISO 8825-1. See also CER, DER, PER.
  • basic lead carbonate — ceruse.
  • basic object adapter — (architecture)   (BOA) Part of the CORBA architecture.
  • basic oxygen process — a process for refining steel in which oxygen is blown into the molten iron
  • basic rate interface — (communications)   (BRI, 2B+D, 2B1D) An Integrated Services Digital Network channel consisting of two 64 kbps "bearer" (B) channels and one 16 kbps "delta" (D) channel, giving a total data rate of 144 kbps. The B channels are used for voice or user data, and the D channel is used for control and signalling and/or X.25 packet networking. BRI is the kind of ISDN interface most likely to be found in residential service.
  • bats-wing coral-tree — a small tree, Erythrina verspertilio, of tropical and subtropical Australia with red flowers and leaves shaped like the wings of a bat
  • be called to the bar — to become a barrister
  • be on someone's case — an instance of the occurrence, existence, etc., of something: Sailing in such a storm was a case of poor judgment.
  • benzene hexachloride — a compound, C6H6Cl6, used as an insecticide
  • benzenesulfonic acid — a fine, needlelike substance, C 6 H 6 SO 3 , used chiefly as a catalyst and in the synthesis of phenol, resorcinol, and other organic products.
  • bernard of clairvaux — Saint. ?1090–1153, French abbot and theologian, who founded the stricter branch of the Cistercians in 1115
  • binary coded decimal — (data)   (BCD, packed decimal) A number representation where a number is expressed as a sequence of decimal digits and then each decimal digit is encoded as a four-bit binary number (a nibble). E.g. decimal 92 would be encoded as the eight-bit sequence 1001 0010. In some cases, the right-most nibble contains the sign (positive or negative). It is easier to convert decimal numbers to and from BCD than binary and, though BCD is often converted to binary for arithmetic processing, it is possible to build hardware that operates directly on BCD.
  • binary-coded decimal — a number in binary code written in groups of four bits, each group representing one digit of the corresponding decimal number
  • binomial coefficient — any of the numerical factors which multiply the successive terms in a binomial expansion; any term of the form n!/(n–k)!k!: written (nk), nCk, or Cnk
  • biogeochemical cycle — the cycle in which nitrogen, carbon, and other inorganic elements of the soil, atmosphere, etc. of a region are converted into the organic substances of animals or plants and released back into the environment
  • biological diversity — Biological diversity is the same as biodiversity.
  • biological half life — Physics. the time required for one half the atoms of a given amount of a radioactive substance to disintegrate.
  • biological half-life — the time required for half of a quantity of radioactive material absorbed by a living tissue or organism to be naturally eliminated
  • bismarck archipelago — a group of over 200 islands in the SW Pacific, northeast of New Guinea: part of Papua New Guinea. Main islands: New Britain, New Ireland, Lavongai, and the Admiralty Islands. Chief town: Rabaul, on New Britain. Pop: 566 610 (2000). Area: 49 658 sq km (19 173 sq miles)
  • black lung (disease) — a disease of the lungs caused by the inhalation of coal dust; anthracosis
  • black-bellied plover — a large plover, Pluvialis squatarola, of both the New and Old Worlds, having black underparts when in nuptial plumage.
  • black-throated diver — a diving bird, Gavia arctica, found in Europe and Asia, and a rare summer visitor to the UK
  • blackburnian warbler — a black-and-white North American wood warbler, Dendroica fusca, having an orange throat and an orange and black head.
  • blast-furnace cement — a type of cement made from a blend of ordinary Portland cement and crushed slag from a blast furnace. It has lower setting properties than ordinary Portland cement
  • blending inheritance — the blending of characteristics of the parents in the offspring, as in a pink flower that results from the mating of a red flower with a white one
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