18-letter words containing e, a, s, t, p
- bichromate process — any of several methods of photography in which the light-sensitive medium is alkaline bichromate associated with a colloid such as gum, albumen, or gelatin.
- biological parents — the biological mother and father of a child
- blue-plate special — an inexpensive restaurant meal served at a fixed price on a large plate, originally blue
- bore the pants off — to bore extremely
- cape breton island — an island off SE Canada, in NE Nova Scotia, separated from the mainland by the Strait of Canso: its easternmost point is Cape Breton. Pop: 132 298 (2006). Area: 10 280 sq km (3970 sq miles)
- cape saint vincent — a headland at the SW extremity of Portugal: scene of several important naval battles, notably in 1797, when the British defeated the French and Spanish
- capital allowances — the money spent by a company on fixed assets which can be taken off the profits of the company before tax is imposed
- capital investment — the money that is invested in something
- capital punishment — Capital punishment is punishment which involves the legal killing of a person who has committed a serious crime such as murder.
- captain james cook — Frederick Albert, 1865–1940, U.S. physician and polar explorer.
- castration complex — an unconscious fear of having one's genitals removed, as a punishment for wishing to have sex with a parent
- catastrophe theory — a mathematical theory that classifies surfaces according to their form
- cathode dark space — Crookes dark space.
- change one's spots — to reform one's character
- character graphics — ASCII art
- christine de pisan — ?1364–?1430, French poet and prose writer, born in Venice. Her works include ballads, rondeaux, lays, and a biography of Charles V of France
- citizenship papers — the document stating that a naturalized person has been formally declared a citizen
- clean up one's act — to start to behave in a responsible manner
- cleopatra's needle — either of two Egyptian obelisks, originally set up at Heliopolis about 1500 bc: one was moved to the Thames Embankment, London, in 1878, the other to Central Park, New York, in 1880
- closed corporation — a corporation the stock of which is owned by a small number of persons and is rarely traded on the open market
- color transparency — a positive color image photographically produced on transparent film or glass and viewed by transmitted light, usually by projection.
- compact video disc — a compact laser disc that plays both pictures and sound
- compassion fatigue — the inability to react sympathetically to a crisis, disaster, etc, because of overexposure to previous crises, disasters, etc
- compensation award — an amount of money awarded as compensation in a court case
- compensation order — (in Britain) the requirement of a court that an offender pay compensation for injury, loss, or damage resulting from an offence, either in preference to or as well as a fine
- compensation point — the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide at which the rate of carbon dioxide uptake by a photosynthesizing plant is exactly balanced by its rate of carbon dioxide release in respiration and photorespiration
- complementarianism — The doctrine that genders in a society should have complementary roles.
- complementary base — either of the nucleotide bases linked by a hydrogen bond on opposite strands of DNA or double-stranded RNA: guanine is the complementary base of cytosine, and adenine is the complementary base of thymine in DNA and of uracil in RNA.
- complexity measure — (algorithm) A quantity describing the complexity of a computation.
- compressor station — A compressor station is a facility with several compressors (= devices that increase the pressure of air or natural gas) and other equipment to pump natural gas under pressure over long distances.
- concentration span — the length of time a person can concentrate on something
- conceptual realism — the doctrine that universals have real and independent existence.
- conceptualisations — Plural form of conceptualisation.
- conceptualizations — Plural form of conceptualization.
- condensation point — a point of which every neighborhood contains an uncountable number of points of a given set.
- connected subgraph — (mathematics) A connected graph consisting of a subset of the nodes and edges of some other graph.
- conservative party — The Conservative Party is the main right-of-centre party in Britain.
- constituency party — a branch of a political party operating within a constituency
- construction paper — Construction paper is a type of stiff, colored paper that children use for drawing and for making things.
- conversation piece — something, esp an unusual object, that provokes conversation
- cornucopian thesis — the belief that, as long as science and technology continue to advance, growth can continue for ever because these new advances create new resources
- corpuscular theory — the theory, originally proposed by Newton, and revived with the development of the quantum theory, that light consists of a stream of particles
- correspondent bank — A correspondent bank is a bank that provides services such as accepting deposits for another bank.
- costume department — the department in a theatre or television company that is responsible for actors' costumes
- cranial osteopathy — osteopathy that focuses on the cranium and the spine
- creatine phosphate — phosphocreatine.
- creeping featurism — (jargon) /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ (Or "feature creep") A systematic tendency to load more chrome and features onto systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed when originally designed. "The main problem with BSD Unix has always been creeping featurism." More generally, creeping featurism is the tendency for anything to become more complicated because people keep saying "Gee, it would be even better if it had this feature too". The result is usually a patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra little feature to help someone, and then another, and another, .... When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a cancer. Usually this term is used to describe computer programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the IRS 1040 form, and new cars. A similar phenomenon sometimes afflicts conscious redesigns; see second-system effect. See also creeping elegance.
- crystal microphone — a microphone that uses a piezoelectric crystal to convert sound energy into electrical energy
- curvature of space — (in relativity) a property of space near massive bodies in which their gravitational field causes light to travel along curved paths.
- daisywheel printer — (printer) A kind of impact printer where the characters are arranged on the ends of the spokes of a wheel (resembling the petals on a daisy). The wheel (usually made of plastic) is rotated to select the character to print and then an electrically operated hammer mechanism bends the selected spoke forward slightly, sandwiching an ink ribbon between the character and the paper, as in a typewriter. One advantage of this arrangement over that of a typewriter is that different wheels may be inserted to produce different typefaces.