19-letter words containing i, c, t
- national serviceman — a soldier undertaking compulsory military service
- natural killer cell — a small killer cell that destroys virus-infected cells or tumor cells without activation by an immune system cell or antibody.
- neats vs. scruffies — (artificial intelligence, jargon) The label used to refer to one of the continuing holy wars in artificial intelligence research. This conflict tangles together two separate issues. One is the relationship between human reasoning and AI; "neats" tend to try to build systems that "reason" in some way identifiably similar to the way humans report themselves as doing, while "scruffies" profess not to care whether an algorithm resembles human reasoning in the least as long as it works. More importantly, neats tend to believe that logic is king, while scruffies favour looser, more ad-hoc methods driven by empirical knowledge. To a neat, scruffy methods appear promiscuous, successful only by accident and not productive of insights about how intelligence actually works; to a scruffy, neat methods appear to be hung up on formalism and irrelevant to the hard-to-capture "common sense" of living intelligences.
- necessary condition — prerequisite
- negative income tax — a system of income subsidy through which persons having less than a certain annual income receive money from the government rather than pay taxes to it.
- negative resistance — a characteristic of certain electronic components in which an increase in the applied voltage increases the resistance, producing a proportional decrease in current
- neighbourhood watch — a scheme under which members of a community agree together to take responsibility for keeping an eye on each other's property, as a way of preventing crime
- neuropathologically — In a neuropathologic way.
- newtonian mechanics — the branch of mechanics that is based on Newton's laws of motion and that is applicable to systems that are so large that Planck's constant can be regarded as negligibly small (distinguished from quantum mechanics).
- newtonian telescope — a reflecting telescope in which a mirror or reflecting prism is mounted on the axis near the eyepiece so that the image may be viewed from outside the telescope tube at right angles to the axis.
- night-scented stock — a plant, Matthiola bicornis, of the genus Matthiola, of the Mediterranean region, cultivated for its brightly coloured flowers: Brassicaceae (crucifers)
- no strings attached — without conditions
- no-write allocation — (memory management) A cache policy where only processor reads are cached, thus avoiding the need for write-back or write-through.
- non-confidentiality — spoken, written, acted on, etc., in strict privacy or secrecy; secret: a confidential remark.
- non-confrontational — tending toward or ready for confrontation: They came to the meeting with a confrontational attitude.
- nonmaterial culture — the aggregate of values, mores, norms, etc., of a society; the ideational structure of a culture that provides the values and meanings by which it functions.
- nonthrombocytopenic — Not thrombocytopenic.
- north pacific ocean — the northern part of the Pacific Ocean, extending from the equator to the Arctic Ocean.
- northwest ordinance — the act of Congress in 1787 providing for the government of the Northwest Territory and setting forth the steps by which its subdivisions might become states.
- not care/give a fig — If you say that someone doesn't care a fig or doesn't give a fig about something, you are emphasizing that they think it is unimportant or that they are not interested in it.
- nuclear disarmament — the gradual reduction and eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons in the world
- object-oriented sql — (language) (OSQL) A functional language, a superset of SQL, used in Hewlett-Packard's OpenODB database system.
- occupation grouping — a category in a system of classifying people according to occupation, based originally on information obtained by government census and subsequently developed by market research. The classifications are used by the advertising industry to identify potential markets. The groups are A, B, C1, C2, D, and E
- occupational hazard — a danger or hazard to workers that is inherent in a particular occupation: Silicosis is an occupational hazard of miners.
- occupational health — Occupational health is the branch of medicine that deals with the health of people in their workplace or in relation to their job.
- office-block ballot — a ballot on which the candidates are listed alphabetically, with or without their party designations, in columns under the office for which they were nominated.
- officer of the deck — a naval duty officer responsible for the operation of the ship in the absence of the captain or the executive officer. Abbreviation: O.O.D.
- oil-catalyst slurry — Oil-catalyst slurry is a heavy aromatic by-product of a refinery's fluid catalytic cracking unit, that forms a small part of global fuel oil supply.
- old spanish customs — irregular practices among a group of workers to gain increased financial allowances, reduced working hours, etc
- olive-backed thrush — Swainson's thrush.
- on no consideration — for no reason whatsoever; never
- operations director — a director or senior manager who oversees the efficiency of business operations
- operations research — the analysis, usually involving mathematical treatment, of a process, problem, or operation to determine its purpose and effectiveness and to gain maximum efficiency.
- optical double star — two stars that appear as one if not viewed through a telescope with adequate magnification, such as two stars that are separated by a great distance but are nearly in line with each other and an observer (optical double star) or those that are relatively close together and comprise a single physical system (physical double star)
- optical mark reader — (hardware) (OMR) A special scanning device that can read carefully placed pencil marks on specially designed documents. OMR is frequenty used in forms, questionnaires, and answer-sheets.
- optimising compiler — (programming, tool) compiler which attempts to analyse the code it produces and to produce more efficient code by performing program transformation such as branch elimination, partial evaluation, or peep-hole optimisation. Contrast pessimising compiler.
- orthopaedic surgeon — a surgeon specializing in the branch of surgery concerned with disorders of the spine and joints and the repair of deformities of these parts
- orthopaedic surgery — surgery concerned with disorders of the spine and joints and the repair of deformities of these parts
- oscillating circuit — a circuit producing electrical oscillations.
- over-centralization — the act or fact of centralizing; fact of being centralized.
- overhead projection — the projection (using an overhead projector) of an enlarged image of a transparency onto a surface above and behind the person using it
- oxidation-reduction — a chemical reaction between two substances in which one substance is oxidized and the other reduced.
- pancreatic fibrosis — cystic fibrosis.
- parachute spinnaker — a very large spinnaker used on a racing yacht.
- parallactic ellipse — the apparent ellipse, as seen against the background of more distant stars, described annually by a nearby star because of the earth's orbital motion around the sun. Compare parallax (def 2).
- parallel projection — a projection from one plane to a second plane in which the lines joining points on the first plane and corresponding images are parallel.
- parametric equation — one of two or more equations expressing the location of a point on a curve or surface by determining each coordinate separately.
- parasympathomimetic — having an effect similar to that produced when the parasympathetic nervous system is stimulated
- parathyroid extract — an aqueous preparation obtained from the parathyroid gland of cattle, used in medicine chiefly in cases of parathyroid deficiency and in veterinary medicine in the treatment of tetanic convulsions.
- parthenogenetically — development of an egg without fertilization.