20-letter words containing f, e, r, t
- certificate of stock — stock certificate.
- certified accountant — (in Britain) a member of the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants, who is authorized to audit company accounts
- chapter of accidents — a series of misfortunes
- chemical fingerprint — a distinctive characteristic or pattern indicating the presence of a certain molecule, used to identify a chemical.
- chief superintendent — an officer of senior rank in a British police force or other similarly organized force
- clothes manufacturer — a business concern that manufactures clothes
- committee of inquiry — (in parliament) a group set up to investigate something
- confectioners' sugar — Confectioners' sugar is very fine white sugar that is used for making icing and candy.
- conference committee — a committee made up of members from both houses whose task is to eliminate any differences between versions of legislation on the same subject passed in the different chambers
- conflict of interest — a conflict between one's obligation to the public good and one's self-interest, as in the case of a public officeholder who owns stock in a company seeking government contracts
- conformal projection — a map projection in which angles formed by lines are preserved: a map made using this projection preserves the shape of any small area.
- conservation of mass — the principle that the total mass of any isolated system is constant and is independent of any chemical and physical changes taking place within the system
- contempt of congress — contempt of a U.S. Congressional body, as of an investigating committee, shown by a witness summoned or appearing before it.
- context-free grammar — (grammar) (CFG) A grammar where the syntax of each constituent (syntactic category or terminal symbol) is independent of the symbols occuring before and after it in a sentence. A context-free grammar describes a context-free language. Context-free grammars can be expressed by a set of "production rules" or syntactic rules. For example, a language with symbols "a" and "b" that must occur in unequal numbers can be represented by the CFG: S → U | V U → TaU | TaT | UaT V → TbV | TbT | VbT T → aTbT | bTaT | ε meaning the top-level category "S" consists of either a "U" or a "V" and so on. The special category "ε" represents the empty string. This grammar is context-free because each rule has a single symbol on its left-hand side.
- coroneted fruit dove — a brightly coloured bird of the Columbidae family with a distinctive marking on its head, found in Indonesia and Papua new Guinea
- correctional officer — a prison guard
- council of ministers — the EU's most important decision-making body
- council of the reich — the Reichsrat.
- counter-inflationary — designed to reduce inflation
- counterproliferation — Action intended to prevent an increase or spread in the possession of nuclear weapons.
- court of last resort — (in the US) a supreme court
- court of st. james's — the British royal court: so called from St. James's Palace, London, the former scene of royal receptions.
- covenant of warranty — warranty (def 2b).
- covenant-of-warranty — warranty (def 2b).
- craft apprenticeship — a period of training for a skilled trade in industry, such as for a plumber or electrician
- cream of tomato soup — a creamy soup made from tomatoes
- data dictionary file — (database) (DDF) A set of files describing the structure of a database file. DDFs define database tables and include information about file locations, field layouts and indexes. DDFs are the standard method for defining field and index characteristics for Btrieve files.
- de facto segregation — racial, ethnic, or other segregation resulting from societal differences between groups, as socioeconomic or political disparity, without institutionalized legislation intended to segregate.
- deduct from the bill — If you deduct an item or expense from the bill at a restaurant or hotel, you take a charge out of a customer's bill.
- defender of the bond — an official appointed in each diocese to uphold marriages of disputed validity.
- defense data network — (DDN) A global communications network serving the US Department of Defense. Composed of MILNET, other portions of the Internet, and classified networks which are not part of the Internet. The DDN is used to connect military installations and is managed by the Defense Information Systems Agency.
- definite description — a description that is modified by the definite article or a possessive, such as the woman in white or Rosemary's baby
- 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
- department of energy — the department of the U.S. federal government that sets forth and maintains the national energy policy, including energy conservation, environmental protection, etc. Abbreviation: DOE.
- department of health — government ministry for health matters
- dichloroethyl formal — a colorless liquid, C 5 H 10 O 2 Cl 2 , used chiefly as a solvent and in the manufacture of certain synthetic rubbers.
- difference threshold — the minimum difference between two stimuli that is just detectable by a person
- differential housing — the casing that houses the differential of a motor vehicle
- differential pricing — a situation in which different prices are charged for the same product or service
- dirac delta function — delta function.
- doctor of the church — a title conferred on an ecclesiastic for great learning and saintliness.
- double fertilization — the fertilization process characteristic of flowering plants, in which one sperm cell of a pollen grain fertilizes an egg cell while a second fuses with two polar nuclei to produce a triploid body that gives rise to the endosperm.
- drink with the flies — to drink alone
- ecological footprint — a mark left by the shod or unshod foot, as in earth or sand.
- edward the confessor — Saint, 1002?–66, English king 1042–66: founder of Westminster Abbey.
- effective resistance — the resistance to an alternating current, expressed as the ratio of the power dissipated to the square of the effective current.
- efficiency apartment — a small apartment consisting typically of a combined living room and bedroom area, a bathroom, and a kitchenette.
- eleanor of aquitaine — ?1122–1204, queen of France (1137–52) by her marriage to Louis VII and queen of England (1154–89) by her marriage to Henry II; mother of the English kings Richard I and John
- electrode efficiency — the ratio of the amount of metal deposited in an electrolytic cell to that theoretically deposited according to Faraday's laws
- electronic footprint — data that identifies a computer that has connected to a particular website