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14-letter words containing e, y, c, a, n

  • richard tawney — Richard Henry, 1880–1962, English historian, born in Calcutta.
  • rsa encryption — (cryptography, algorithm)   A public-key cryptosystem for both encryption and authentication, invented in 1977 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman. Its name comes from their initials. The RSA algorithm works as follows. Take two large prime numbers, p and q, and find their product n = pq; n is called the modulus. Choose a number, e, less than n and relatively prime to (p-1)(q-1), and find its reciprocal mod (p-1)(q-1), and call this d. Thus ed = 1 mod (p-1)(q-1); e and d are called the public and private exponents, respectively. The public key is the pair (n, e); the private key is d. The factors p and q must be kept secret, or destroyed. It is difficult (presumably) to obtain the private key d from the public key (n, e). If one could factor n into p and q, however, then one could obtain the private key d. Thus the entire security of RSA depends on the difficulty of factoring; an easy method for factoring products of large prime numbers would break RSA.
  • sacramentality — of, relating to, or of the nature of a sacrament, especially the sacrament of the Eucharist.
  • safety curtain — a sheet of asbestos or other fireproof material that can be lowered just inside the proscenium arch in case of fire, sealing off the backstage area from the auditorium.
  • scaly anteater — pangolin.
  • scenic railway — a railroad that carries its passengers on a brief tour of an amusement park, resort, etc.
  • scientifically — of or relating to science or the sciences: scientific studies.
  • scratch monkey — (humour)   As in "Before testing or reconfiguring, always mount a scratch monkey", a proverb used to advise caution when dealing with irreplaceable data or devices. Used to refer to any scratch volume hooked to a computer during any risky operation as a replacement for some precious resource or data that might otherwise get trashed. This term preserves the memory of Mabel, the Swimming Wonder Monkey, star of a biological research program at the University of Toronto. Mabel was not (so the legend goes) your ordinary monkey; the university had spent years teaching her how to swim, breathing through a regulator, in order to study the effects of different gas mixtures on her physiology. Mabel suffered an untimely demise one day when a DEC engineer troubleshooting a crash on the program's VAX inadvertently interfered with some custom hardware that was wired to Mabel. It is reported that, after calming down an understandably irate customer sufficiently to ascertain the facts of the matter, a DEC troubleshooter called up the field circus manager responsible and asked him sweetly, "Can you swim?" Not all the consequences to humans were so amusing; the sysop of the machine in question was nearly thrown in jail at the behest of certain clueless droids at the local "humane" society. The moral is clear: When in doubt, always mount a scratch monkey. A corespondent adds: The details you give are somewhat consistent with the version I recall from the Digital "War Stories" notesfile, but the name "Mabel" and the swimming bit were not mentioned, IIRC. Also, there's a very detailed account that claims that three monkies died in the incident, not just one. I believe Eric Postpischil wrote the original story at DEC, so his coming back with a different version leads me to wonder whether there ever was a real Scratch Monkey incident.
  • secondary beam — a beam of particles of one kind selected from the group of particles produced when a beam of particles from an accelerator (primary beam) strikes a target.
  • secondary cell — storage cell.
  • secondary gain — any advantage, as increased attention, disability benefits, or release from unpleasant responsibilities, obtained as a result of having an illness (distinguished from primary gain).
  • secondary road — a road less important than a main road or highway.
  • secondary wall — the innermost part of a plant cell wall, deposited after the wall has ceased to increase in surface area.
  • secondary wave — a transverse earthquake wave that travels through the interior of the earth and is usually the second conspicuous wave to reach a seismograph.
  • secure tenancy — the letting of a dwelling by a nonprivate landlord, usually a local council or housing association, under an agreement that allows security of tenure, subletting, improvements made to the property by the tenant without consequent rent increase, and the right to buy the dwelling at a discount after three years' occupancy
  • silicon valley — the area in northern California, southwest of San Francisco in the Santa Clara valley region, where many of the high-technology design and manufacturing companies in the semiconductor industry are concentrated.
  • slave cylinder — a small cylinder containing a piston that operates the brake shoes or pads in hydraulic brakes or the working part in any other hydraulically operated system
  • sockeye salmon — an important food fish, Oncorhynchus nerka, inhabiting the North Pacific.
  • sodium cyanide — a white, crystalline, deliquescent, water-soluble, poisonous powder, NaCN, prepared by heating sodium amide with charcoal: used chiefly in casehardening alloys, in the leaching and flotation of ore, and in electroplating.
  • stanley dancer — Stanley, 1927–2005, U.S. harness racer and trainer.
  • subcontrariety — the quality or state of being subcontrary
  • subcutaneously — situated or lying under the skin, as tissue.
  • subgenerically — in a subgeneric manner; in a way relating to a subgenus
  • surinam cherry — a tropical American tree, Eugenia uniflora, of the myrtle family, having ovate leaves and fragrant, white flowers.
  • synaptic cleft — the small gap, measured in nanometers, between an axon terminal and any of the cell membranes in the immediate vicinity.
  • sync-generator — an electronic generator that supplies synchronizing pulses to television scanning and transmitting equipment.
  • systematicness — having, showing, or involving a system, method, or plan: a systematic course of reading; systematic efforts.
  • tandem bicycle — a bicycle for two or more persons, having seats and corresponding sets of pedals arranged in tandem, especially popular in the 19th century.
  • telephonically — of, relating to, or happening by means of a telephone system.
  • teratogenicity — the production or induction of malformations or monstrosities, especially of a developing embryo or fetus.
  • thermodynamics — the science concerned with the relations between heat and mechanical energy or work, and the conversion of one into the other: modern thermodynamics deals with the properties of systems for the description of which temperature is a necessary coordinate.
  • treasury bench — (in Britain) the front bench to the right of the Speaker in the House of Commons, traditionally reserved for members of the Government
  • trysting place — a place for a meeting, especially a secret meeting of lovers; rendezvous.
  • turbomachinery — machinery consisting of, incorporating, or constituting a turbine
  • tymshare, inc. — (company)   The US company that created the TYMNET network.
  • tyndall effect — the visible path of light produced by the scattering action (Tyndall effect) of the particles in a colloidal solution on a beam of light passed through it.
  • tyndall-effect — the visible path of light produced by the scattering action (Tyndall effect) of the particles in a colloidal solution on a beam of light passed through it.
  • unacademically — in an unacademic manner
  • unaccidentally — happening by chance or accident; not planned; unexpected: an accidental meeting.
  • unaccustomedly — in an unaccustomed manner
  • unattractively — in an unattractive manner
  • unauthenticity — the quality of lacking authenticity or not being genuine
  • uncanny valley — a psychological concept that describes the feelings of unease or revulsion that people tend to have toward artificial representations of human beings, as robots or computer animations, that closely imitate many but not all the features and behaviors of actual human beings. the dip in positive feelings toward such artificial representations.
  • uncongeniality — the condition of being uncongenial
  • uncontemporary — outmoded
  • uncrystallized — lacking a final form
  • undecidability — the quality of being undecidable
  • under-activity — insufficiently active: an underactive thyroid gland.
  • undersecretary — an official who is subordinate to a principal secretary, as in the U.S. cabinet: Under Secretary of the Treasury.
  • undiscoverably — in an undiscoverable manner
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