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20-letter words containing e, l, i, g

  • career limiting move — (jargon)   (CLM, Sun) Any action endangering one's future prospects of getting plum projects and raises, and possibly one's job. E.g. "His Halloween costume was a parody of his manager. He won the prize for "best CLM"." A severe bug discovered by a customer might be a "CLM bug".
  • carl friedrich gauss — (person)   A German mathematician (1777 - 1855), one of all time greatest. Gauss discovered the method of least squares and Gaussian elimination. Gauss was something of a child prodigy; the most commonly told story relates that when he was 10 his teacher, wanting a rest, told his class to add up all the numbers from 1 to 100. Gauss did it in seconds, having noticed that 1+...+100 = 100+...+1 = (101+...+101)/2. He did important work in almost every area of mathematics. Such eclecticism is probably impossible today, since further progress in most areas of mathematics requires much hard background study. Some idea of the range of his work can be obtained by noting the many mathematical terms with "Gauss" in their names. E.g. Gaussian elimination (linear algebra); Gaussian primes (number theory); Gaussian distribution (statistics); Gauss [unit] (electromagnetism); Gaussian curvature (differential geometry); Gaussian quadrature (numerical analysis); Gauss-Bonnet formula (differential geometry); Gauss's identity (hypergeometric functions); Gauss sums (number theory). His favourite area of mathematics was number theory. He conjectured the Prime Number Theorem, pioneered the theory of quadratic forms, proved the quadratic reciprocity theorem, and much more. He was "the first mathematician to use complex numbers in a really confident and scientific way" (Hardy & Wright, chapter 12). He nearly went into architecture rather than mathematics; what decided him on mathematics was his proof, at age 18, of the startling theorem that a regular N-sided polygon can be constructed with ruler and compasses if and only if N is a power of 2 times a product of distinct Fermat primes.
  • cassegrain telescope — an astronomical reflecting telescope in which incident light is reflected from a large concave paraboloid mirror onto a smaller convex hyperboloid mirror and then back through a hole in the concave mirror to form the image
  • celestial navigation — navigation by observation of the positions of the stars
  • central india agency — a former group of 89 states in India, under the supervision of a British political agent until 1947: most important were Indore, Bhopal, and Rewa
  • centrifugal spinning — the spinning of rayon filaments in a centrifugal box.
  • chemical engineering — Chemical engineering is the designing and constructing of machines that are needed for industrial chemical processes.
  • chemical fingerprint — a distinctive characteristic or pattern indicating the presence of a certain molecule, used to identify a chemical.
  • child support agency — the British government agency concerned with the welfare of children
  • child-abuse register — (in Britain) a list of children deemed to be at risk of abuse or injury from their parents or guardians, compiled and held by a local authority, area health authority, or NSPCC Special Unit
  • chip scale packaging — (hardware)   (CSP) A type of surface mount integrated circuit packaging that provides pre-speed-sorted, pre-tested and pre-packaged die without requiring special testing. An example is Motorola's Micro SMT packaging. See also: chip-on-board, flip chip, multichip module, known good die, ball grid array.
  • chips & technologies — (company)   A former leading distributor and supplier of integrated circuits and software to personal computer manufacturers. As well as semiconductors they also made flat panel displays, video controllers and other computer related products. In 1998, Intel Corporation bought Chips and Technologies for their flat panel controllers. In January 2000, Asiliant Technologies licensed the rights from Intel to continue to manufacturer and sell Chips and Technologies components. Address: 2950 Zanker Road, San Jose, California 95134, USA.
  • chrono-logical order — the arrangement of things following one after another in time: Put these documents in chronological order.
  • clay-pigeon shooting — the activity of shooting clay pigeons
  • cleansing department — the department of a local authority that collects refuse
  • climbing bittersweet — bittersweet (def 4).
  • climbing-bittersweet — Also called woody nightshade. a climbing or trailing plant, Solanum dulcamara, of the nightshade family, having small, violet, star-shaped flowers with a protruding yellow center and scarlet berries.
  • clip someone's wings — to restrict someone's freedom
  • coalition government — a government containing members of two or more political parties
  • cognitive psychology — the psychological study of higher mental processes, including thinking and perception
  • collective agreement — a negotiated agreement, which is not enforceable at law, between an employer and employees' representatives, covering rates of pay or terms and conditions of employment, or both
  • college of cardinals — the collective body of cardinals having the function of electing and advising the pope
  • college of education — a professional training college for teachers
  • collegiate institute — (in certain provinces) a large secondary school with an academic, rather than vocational, emphasis
  • common lodging house — a cheap lodging house
  • comparative religion — a field of study seeking to derive general principles from a comparison and classification of the growth and influence of various religions.
  • compensating balance — Also, compensated balance, compensation balance. a balance wheel in a timepiece, designed to compensate for variations in tension in the hair spring caused by changes in temperature.
  • congressional record — (in the US) the government journal that publishes all proceedings of Congress
  • continental congress — the assembly of delegates from the North American rebel colonies held during and after the War of American Independence. It issued the Declaration of Independence (1776) and framed the Articles of Confederation (1777)
  • contingency planning — planning for future events that seem less likely than others
  • contingent liability — a possible liability that is dependent on the outcome of a future event
  • controlling interest — a quantity of shares in a business that is sufficient to ensure control over its direction
  • convergent evolution — the evolutionary development of a superficial resemblance between unrelated animals that occupy a similar environment, as in the evolution of wings in birds and bats
  • corresponding angles — a pair of nonadjacent angles, one interior and one exterior, on the same side of a transversal: these paired angles are equal if the lines cut by the transversal are parallel
  • cost-of-living index — a numerical scale by means of which cost-of-living levels can be compared with a base number
  • council-manager plan — (in the US) a system of local government with an elected legislative council and an appointed administrative manager
  • counter-intelligence — Counter-intelligence consists of actions that a country takes in order to find out whether another country is spying on it and to prevent it from doing so.
  • coupling coefficient — The coupling coefficient of a pair of coils is a measure of the magnetic effect passing between them.
  • criminal proceedings — action taken in a court to bring a criminal prosecution against someone
  • cylinder head gasket — (in an automobile engine) a gasket placed between the cylinder and the cylinder heads to avoid leaks of coolant and compression
  • daylight saving time — Daylight Saving Time is a period of time in the summer when the clocks are set one hour forward, so that people can have extra light in the evening.
  • daylight-saving time — the civil time observed when daylight saving is adopted in a country or community.
  • declarative language — (language)   Any relational language or functional language. These kinds of programming language describe relationships between variables in terms of functions or inference rules, and the language executor (interpreter or compiler) applies some fixed algorithm to these relations to produce a result. Declarative languages contrast with imperative languages which specify explicit manipulation of the computer's internal state; or procedural languages which specify an explicit sequence of steps to follow. The most common examples of declarative languages are logic programming languages such as Prolog and functional languages like Haskell. See also production system.
  • decompartmentalizing — Present participle of decompartmentalize.
  • degree of difficulty — a rating which reflects the difficulty of the manoeuvre or action an athlete is attempting to perform in sports such as gymnastics and diving, and which is factored into the final score
  • deinstitutionalizing — Present participle of deinstitutionalize.
  • dementia pugilistica — chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
  • deontological ethics — the branch of ethics dealing with right action and the nature of duty, without regard to the goodness or value of motives or the desirability of the ends of any act.
  • determinate cleavage — cell division in a fertilized or unfertilized egg resulting in daughter cells that are no longer able to produce a complete embryo by themselves
  • developing-out paper — a sensitized printing paper requiring development in order to bring out the image. Abbreviation: D.O.P.
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