18-letter words containing h, a, n, c
- branch instruction — a machine-language or assembly-language instruction that causes the computer to branch to another instruction
- branch to fishkill — (IBM: from the location of one of the corporation's facilities) Any unexpected jump in a program that produces catastrophic or just plain weird results. See jump off into never-never land, hyperspace.
- branching fraction — (in branching) the proportion of the disintegrating nuclei that follow a particular branch to the total number of disintegrating nuclides
- breach of contract — the act of breaking the conditions of a contract
- breast enhancement — a surgical procedure to increase the size of a woman's breasts
- breathing exercise — an exercise intended to promote effective and healthy breathing and breath control
- broadcasting house — any of a number of buildings in the UK from which the BBC broadcasts or has broadcast
- bromochloromethane — chlorobromomethane.
- bronchocandidiasis — See under candidiasis.
- california fuchsia — a North American onagraceous plant, Zauschneria californica, with tubular scarlet flowers
- california-fuchsia — a plant belonging to the genus Fuchsia, of the evening primrose family, including many varieties cultivated for their handsome drooping flowers.
- capital punishment — Capital punishment is punishment which involves the legal killing of a person who has committed a serious crime such as murder.
- carbonic anhydrase — an enzyme in blood cells that catalyses the decomposition of carbonic acid into carbon dioxide and water, facilitating the transport of carbon dioxide from the tissues to the lungs
- carbonic-anhydride — carbon dioxide.
- carboxyhaemoglobin — haemoglobin coordinated with carbon monoxide, formed as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning. As carbon monoxide is bound in preference to oxygen, tissues are deprived of oxygen
- carolina chickadee — a chickadee, Parus carolinensis, of the southeastern U.S., resembling but smaller than the black-capped chickadee.
- carpenterworm moth — any moth of the family Cossidae, as Prionoxystus robiniae of the U.S. and southern Canada, whose larvae bore into the trunks and branches of oaks, locusts, and other trees.
- carthaginian peace — the treaty by which Rome reduced Carthage to the status of a puppet state in 201 b.c.
- cartilaginous fish — any fish of the class Chondrichthyes, including the sharks, skates, and rays, having a skeleton composed entirely of cartilage
- cash-for-questions — of, involved in, or relating to a scandal in which some MPs were accused of accepting bribes to ask particular questions in Parliament
- catapult launching — the fact of launching aircraft into the air by a device installed in warships
- catch as catch can — Also, catch-can. taking advantage of any opportunity; using any method that can be applied: a catch-as-catch-can life, as an itinerant handyman.
- catch one's breath — When you catch your breath while you are doing something energetic, you stop for a short time so that you can start breathing normally again.
- catch-as-catch-can — a style of wrestling in which trips, holds below the waist, etc, are allowed
- catcher in the rye — a novel (1951) by J. D. Salinger.
- caterpillar hunter — any of various carabid beetles of the genus Calosoma, of Europe and North America, which prey on the larvae of moths and butterflies
- catherine of siena — Saint. 1347–80, Italian mystic and ascetic; patron saint of the Dominican order. Feast day: April 29
- cellular telephone — a mobile phone
- centralized school — a public school formed from the pupils and teachers of a number of discontinued smaller schools, especially in a rural district.
- centrifugal clutch — an automatic clutch in which the friction surfaces are engaged by weighted levers acting under centrifugal force at a certain speed of rotation
- chambered nautilus — nautilus (def 1).
- championship point — a point that would decide the winner of a match that would decide the championship
- chandelier earring — one of a pair of long and ornate earrings that dangle from the earlobes, usually dropping from more than one level.
- change one's spots — to reform one's character
- change the subject — to select a new topic of conversation
- changement de pied — a jump in which the dancer's feet are reversed from the starting position.
- character encoding — (character) (Or "character encoding scheme") A mapping between binary data values and character code positions (or "code points"). Early systems stored characters in a variety of ways, e.g. four six-bit characters in a 24-bit word, but around 1960, eight-bit bytes started to become the most common data storage layout, with each character stored in one byte, typically in the ASCII character set. In the case of ASCII, the character encoding is an identity mapping: code position 65 maps to the byte value 65. This is possible because ASCII uses only code positions representable as single bytes, i.e., values between 0 and 255. (US-ASCII only uses values 0 to 127, in fact.) From the late 1990s, there was increased use of larger character sets such as Unicode and many CJK coded character sets. These can represent characters from many languages and more symbols.
- character-building — improving certain good or useful traits in a person's character, esp self-reliance, endurance, and courage
- charge conjugation — the mathematical operation of replacing every elementary particle by its antiparticle. Symbol: C.
- chartered engineer — (in Britain) an engineer who is registered with the Engineering Council as having the scientific and technical knowledge and practical experience to satisfy its professional requirements
- chattering classes — The chattering classes are people such as journalists, broadcasters, or public figures who comment on events but have little or no influence over them.
- chebyshev equation — Tchebycheff equation.
- check verification — Check verification is a system that checks national databases of information about individuals to make sure that checks will be honored and fraud is not being committed.
- checkpoint charlie — a crossing between East and West Berlin during the Cold War
- chemical machining — the shaping of a metal part by controlled removal of unwanted metal by a flow of chemical solutions
- chemical potential — a thermodynamic function of a substance in a system that is the partial differential of the Gibbs function of the system with respect to the number of moles of the substance
- chemical pregnancy — a pregnancy that is confirmed by a pregnancy test but not by clinical signs and terminates before clinical signs can be observed.
- chew someone's ear — to reprimand severely
- chicken tetrazzini — diced chicken in a cream sauce, baked in a casserole with noodles and cheese, usually flavored with sherry.
- chickenheartedness — Alternative form of chicken-heartedness.