21-letter words containing e, t, c
- the shipping forecast — a radio broadcast made by the BBC of weather reports and forecasts for the seas around the British Isles
- the stationery office — (in the UK) the company that supplies the civil service with all its office supplies, machinery, printing and binding, etc
- the student community — the body of students in further and higher education, considered as a whole
- the supreme sacrifice — the sacrifice of one's life
- the throwaway society — a society full of excessive consumption and waste of food, products, etc
- the yellow brick road — the road to success or happiness (in the film the Wizard of Oz the yellow brick road leads to Oz)
- theoretical physicist — a scientist who studies theoretical physics
- therapeutic community — a group-based form of therapy for mental disorders, sometimes residential
- thermal decomposition — Thermal decomposition is the process in which a chemical species breaks down when its temperature is increased.
- thermoelectric couple — thermocouple.
- thermoelectric effect — the production of an electromotive force in a thermocouple.
- thermophosphorescence — thermoluminescence.
- third party procedure — impleader.
- third-party insurance — insurance that compensates for a loss to a party other than the insured for which the insured is liable.
- three-toed woodpecker — either of two woodpeckers of the genus Picoides, of the Northern Hemisphere, having only three toes on each foot.
- threshold wage policy — a policy whereby wages are increased in accordance with inflation
- throw sb a curve ball — If someone throws you a curve or throws you a curve ball, they surprise you by doing something that you do not expect.
- throw someone a curve — a continuously bending line, without angles.
- ticker-tape reception — (mainly in New York) the showering of the motorcade of a distinguished politician, visiting head of state, etc, with ticker tape as a sign of welcome
- tide-generating force — the difference between the force of gravity exerted by the moon or the sun on a particle of water in the ocean and that exerted on an equal mass of matter at the centre of the earth. The lunar tide-generating forces are about 2.2 times greater than are the solar ones
- to be a hospital case — if you say that someone or something is a hospital case, you mean that they need urgent help because they are doing very badly
- to be hard luck on sb — to be unfortunate or unlucky for someone
- to be public property — to be publicly owned
- to change the subject — When someone involved in a conversation changes the subject, they start talking about something else, often because the previous subject was embarrassing.
- to cross your fingers — If you cross your fingers, you put one finger on top of another and hope for good luck. If you say that someone is keeping their fingers crossed, you mean they are hoping for good luck.
- to fly in the face of — If an action or belief flies in the face of accepted ideas or rules, it seems to completely oppose or contradict them.
- to get back to basics — to revert to a simpler method, eg of living or doing business
- to get your rocks off — to reach orgasm; gain sexual satisfaction
- to kick someone's ass — To kick ass or to kick someone's ass means to show them that you are angry with them, either by telling them or by using physical force.
- to play second fiddle — If you play second fiddle to someone, your position is less important than theirs in something that you are doing together.
- to play the race card — if someone plays the race card they bring up the issue of race in a discussion, perhaps for sympathy or to seek popularity by appealing to racist sentiment
- to sink without trace — If you say that someone or something sinks without trace or sinks without a trace, you mean that they stop existing or stop being successful very suddenly and completely.
- tool command language — (language) /tik*l/ (Tcl) An interpreted string processing language for issuing commands to interactive programs, developed by John Ousterhout at UCB. Each application program can extend tcl with its own set of commands. Tcl is like a text-oriented Lisp, but lets you write algebraic expressions for simplicity and to avoid scaring people away. Though originally designed to be a "scripting language" rather than for serious programming, Tcl has been used successfully for programs with hundreds of thousands of lines. It has a peculiar but simple syntax. It may be used as an embedded interpreter in application programs. It has exceptions and packages (called libraries), name-spaces for procedures and variables, and provide/require. It supports dynamic loading of object code. It is eight-bit clean. It has only three variable types: strings, lists and associative arrays but no structures. Tcl and its associated GUI toolkit, Tk run on all flavors of Unix, Microsoft Windows, Macintosh and VMS. Tcl runs on the Amiga and many other platforms. See also expect (control interactive programs and pattern match on their output), Cygnus Tcl Tools, [incr Tcl] (adds classes and inheritence to Tcl), Scriptics (John Ousterhout's company that is the home of Tcl development and the TclPro tool suite), Tcl Consortium (a non-profit agency dedicated to promoting Tcl), tclhttpd (an embeddable Tcl-based web server), tclx (adds many commands to Tcl), tcl-debug.
- topgallant forecastle — a partial weather deck on top of a forecastle superstructure; forecastle deck.
- total recoverable gas — Total recoverable gas is the amount of gas which is still left in the ground in gas fields that have already been worked.
- total recoverable oil — Total recoverable oil is the amount of oil which is still left in the ground in oilfields that have already been worked.
- trades union congress — The Trades Union Congress in Britain is the same as the TUC.
- traffic control tower — an elevated structure for the visual observation and control of the air and ground traffic at an airport
- transactinide element — any element having an atomic number higher than 103, the last of the actinide series. These superheavy, radioactive elements are extremely short-lived, and can only be created in the laboratory.
- transcendental number — a number that is not a root of any algebraic equation having integral coefficients, as π or e .
- trichloroacetaldehyde — chloral (def 1).
- trichloronitromethane — chloropicrin.
- trustee in bankruptcy — a person appointed by a court to administer the property of a bankrupt.
- truth or consequences — a game in which each contestant is asked a question and upon failure to answer or give a correct answer receives a penalty imposed by the leader or the group.
- tubercular meningitis — an infection of the membranes of the central nervous system caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis; features can include fever, headache, and coma
- tumor necrosis factor — a protein, produced in humans and other animals, that is destructive to cells showing abnormally rapid growth: identical with cachectin. Abbreviation: TNF.
- tuple space smalltalk — ["Using Tuple Space Communication in Distributed Object-Oriented Languages", S. Matsuoka et al, SIGPLAN Notices 23(11):276-284 (Nov 1988)].
- turn queen's evidence — (of an accomplice) to act as witness for the prosecution and testify against those associated with him or her in crime
- turn state's evidence — If someone who is accused of a crime turns state's evidence, they agree to give evidence in a law court against another person such as a former accomplice, usually in exchange for a reduced sentence for themselves.
- twelve-tone technique — a modern system of tone relationships in which the 12 tones of an octave are not centered around any one tone, but are unified by a selected order of tones for a given composition.