22-letter words containing i, e, c, o
- basic operating system — (operating system) (BOS) An early [when?] IBM operating system. According to folklore, BOS was the predecessor to TOS on the IBM 360 and it was IPL'd from a card reader. It may have been intended for very small 360's with no disks and limited tape drives. BOS died out really early [when?] as disks such as the 2311 and 2314 became common with the IBM 360, whereas disks had been a real luxury on the IBM 7090.
- battle of the atlantic — the struggle for control of the sea routes around the United Kingdom during World War II, esp 1940–43
- behaviour modification — the use of techniques to change someone's behaviour by reinforcing desired behaviour
- being from outer space — a monster; an imaginary creature
- benzenecarboxylic acid — benzoic acid.
- bernoulli's lemniscate — Analytic Geometry. lemniscate.
- beta-indoleacetic acid — indoleacetic acid.
- bidirectional printing — (hardware) A feature of a printer whose printer head can print both when moving left to right and when moving right to left. Also known as "boustrophedonic".
- biological engineering — bioengineering.
- biomedical engineering — bioengineering (def 1).
- black-scholes equation — a partial differential equation used to estimate the changing value of an option over time
- block diagram compiler — (simulation, language) (BDL) A block diagram simulation tool, with associated language.
- board of commissioners — the administrative body of a county in many U.S. states, especially in the South and the West, having from two to seven elected members.
- born in/out of wedlock — If a baby is born in wedlock, it is born while its parents are married. If it is born out of wedlock, it is born at a time when its parents are not married.
- brachiocephalic artery — a major artery, arising from the arch of the aorta, that supplies blood to the right arm and the head.
- bring down the curtain — If something brings down the curtain on an event or situation, it causes or marks the end of it.
- bug-for-bug compatible — Same as bug-compatible, with the additional implication that much tedious effort went into ensuring that each (known) bug was replicated.
- c programmer's disease — (programming) The tendency of the undisciplined C programmer to set arbitrary but supposedly generous static limits on table sizes (defined, if you're lucky, by constants in header files) rather than taking the trouble to do proper dynamic storage allocation. If an application user later needs to put 68 elements into a table of size 50, the afflicted programmer reasons that he or she can easily reset the table size to 68 (or even as much as 70, to allow for future expansion) and recompile. This gives the programmer the comfortable feeling of having made the effort to satisfy the user's (unreasonable) demands, and often affords the user multiple opportunities to explore the marvellous consequences of fandango on core. In severe cases of the disease, the programmer cannot comprehend why each fix of this kind seems only to further disgruntle the user.
- cast in one's lot with — to share in the activities or fortunes of (someone else)
- catch sight of someone — If you catch sight of someone, you suddenly see them, often briefly.
- categorical imperative — (in the ethics of Kant) the unconditional moral principle that one's behaviour should accord with universalizable maxims which respect persons as ends in themselves; the obligation to do one's duty for its own sake and not in pursuit of further ends
- cease-and-desist order — an order by a government agency to a person or corporation to terminate a business practice found by the agency to be illegal or unfair.
- centimeter-gram-second — designating or of a system of measurement in which the centimeter, gram, and second are the units of length, mass, and time, respectively
- central locking device — a small device that controls the central locking on a motor vehicle
- certificate of deposit — a negotiable certificate issued by a bank in return for a deposit of money for a term of up to five years
- charity begins at home — If you say charity begins at home, you mean that people should deal with the needs of people close to them before they think about helping others.
- chemical sympathectomy — the chemical destruction of one or more parts of the sympathetic nervous system
- chemical-sympathectomy — sympathectomy (def 2).
- chicago board of trade — a major exchange in the United States that deals in futures, notably of grains and metals. Abbreviation: CBT.
- chief academic officer — an official in a university, college, or medical school who usually reports directly to the president, chancellor, rector, or vice chancellor
- chip off the old block — a person who resembles one of his or her parents in behaviour
- chip on one's shoulder — an inclination to fight or quarrel
- chlorotrifluoromethane — a colorless gas, CClF 3 , used chiefly as a refrigerant, in the hardening of metals, and in pharmaceutical processing.
- chromosomal aberration — any irregularity or abnormality of chromosome distribution, number, structure, or arrangement.
- cirrhosis of the liver — liver disease
- city of brotherly love — Philadelphia, Pa. (used as a nickname).
- cockpit voice recorder — a device which records conversations in and communications from the cockpit of an aircraft
- cognitive architecture — (architecture) A computer architecure involving non-deterministic, multiple inference processes, as found in neural networks. Cognitive architectures model the human brain and contrast with single processor computers. The term might also refer to software architectures, e.g. fuzzy logic.
- coiled tubing drilling — Coiled tubing drilling is drilling using a narrow (1.75 to 3.5in) seamless tube of high-grade steel, wound onto a reel.
- collateral circulation — circulation of blood through a network of minor vessels that become enlarged and joined with adjacent vessels when a major vein or artery is impaired, as by obstruction.
- collective pitch lever — a lever in a helicopter to change the angle of attack of all the rotor blades simultaneously, causing it to rise or descend
- collective unconscious — In psychology, the collective unconscious consists of the basic ideas and images that all people are believed to share because they have inherited them.
- colliding-beam machine — a particle accelerator in which positively and negatively charged particles circulate in opposite directions and collide head-on.
- color graphics adapter — (hardware, graphics) (CGA) One of IBM's earliest hardware video display standards for use in IBM PCs. CGA can display 80*25 or 40*25 text in 16 colors, 640*200 pixels of graphics in two colors or 320*200 in four colors (IBM PC video modes 0-6). It is now obsolete.
- come up with the goods — If you deliver the goods or come up with the goods, you do what is expected or required of you.
- command line interface — (operating system) A means of communication between a program and its user, based solely on textual input and output. Commands are input with the help of a keyboard or similar device and are interpreted and executed by the program. Results are output as text or graphics to the terminal. Command line interfaces usually provide greater flexibility than graphical user interfaces, at the cost of being harder for the novice to use. Consequently, some hackers look down on GUIs as designed For The Rest Of Them.
- commissioner for oaths — a solicitor authorized to authenticate oaths on sworn statements
- committee of the whole — (in the US) all the members of the House of Representatives, regarded as a committee
- common external tariff — the common tariff of charges imposed by the members of a customs union on imports from non-members
- common situs picketing — the picketing of an entire construction project by a union having a dispute with only one subcontractor working at the site.