20-letter words containing i, n, r, e
- colonial experiencer — affluent young Englishman who gained experience of farming, etc in colonial Australia
- commissioned officer — a military officer holding a commission, such as Second Lieutenant in the British Army, Acting Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, Pilot Officer in the Royal Air Force, and officers of all ranks senior to these
- commissioning editor — a person who commissions authors to write books and magazine articles
- committee of inquiry — (in parliament) a group set up to investigate something
- common-sense realism — naive realism.
- communication theory — information theory.
- comparative judgment — any judgment about whether there is a difference between two or more stimuli
- comparative religion — a field of study seeking to derive general principles from a comparison and classification of the growth and influence of various religions.
- compartmentalisation — Alternative form of compartmentalization.
- compartmentalization — to divide into categories or compartments.
- compensation culture — a culture in which people are very ready to go to law over even relatively minor incidents in the hope of gaining compensation
- complaints procedure — a prescribed method of lodging a complaint to an institution
- comprehensive school — a secondary school for children of all abilities from the same district
- compression ignition — ignition of engine fuel by the heat of air compressed in the cylinders into which the fuel is introduced.
- computer programming — the activity or profession of writing computer programs
- computer typesetting — a system for the high-speed composition of type by a device driven by punched paper tape or magnetic tape that has been processed by a computer
- conditioned response — a response that is transferred from the second to the first of a pair of stimuli. A well-known Pavlovian example is salivation by a dog when it hears a bell ring, because food has always been presented when the bell has been rung previously
- 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
- conferencing over ip — (communications, standard) (CoIP) Standards for the transmission of multimedia over the Internet. CoIP extends VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) with text, images, video. The main CoIP standard is based on H.323. The VoIP forum of the IMTC merged with the H.323 Activity Group in January 1999 to form the Conferencing over IP (CoIP) Activity Group. VoIP uses "VoIP Devices" as gateways to route voice data packets over the Internet or PSTN. Protocols such as SGCP and its successor MGCP extend VoIP to handle media other than voice data.
- 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.
- congressional record — (in the US) the government journal that publishes all proceedings of Congress
- connector conspiracy — (business, standard) The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension, other designers) to come up with products that don't fit with the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive interface devices. The term probably came into prominence with the appearance of the DEC KL-10, none of whose connectors matched anything else. The KL-10 Massbus connector was actually *patented* by DEC, who reputedly refused to licence the design, thus effectively locking out competition for the lucrative Massbus peripherals market. This policy was a source of frustration for the owners of dying, obsolescent disk and tape drives. A related phenomenon is the invention of new screw heads so that only Designated Persons, possessing the magic screwdrivers, can remove covers and make repairs or install options. Older Apple Macintoshes took this one step further, requiring not only a hex wrench but a specialised case-cracking tool to open the box. With the advent of more open-systems computing this term has fallen somewhat into disuse. Compare backward combatability.
- 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
- conservative baptist — a member of a Protestant denomination (Conservative Baptist Association of America) organized in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1948.
- conservative judaism — a movement reacting against the radicalism of Reform Judaism, rejecting extreme change and advocating moderate relaxations of traditional Jewish law, by an extension of the process by which its adherents claim traditional Orthodox Judaism evolved
- consumer electronics — computers and other electronic devices designed for private individuals as opposed to businesses
- consumer price index — The consumer price index is an official measure of the rate of inflation within a country's economy. The abbreviation CPI is also used.
- contact metamorphism — localized metamorphism resulting from the heat of an igneous intrusion.
- continental congress — the assembly of delegates from the North American rebel colonies held during and after the War of American Independence. It issued the Declaration of Independence (1776) and framed the Articles of Confederation (1777)
- continued proportion — geometric progression
- continuity announcer — A continuity announcer is someone who introduces the next programme on a radio or television station.
- controlled explosion — the deliberate detonation of an explosive device under strictly controlled circumstances
- controlling interest — a quantity of shares in a business that is sufficient to ensure control over its direction
- convective discharge — the repulsion of ions of a gas by a highly charged body, creating a discernible wind.
- convergent evolution — the evolutionary development of a superficial resemblance between unrelated animals that occupy a similar environment, as in the evolution of wings in birds and bats
- conversation stopper — a comment that is so shocking or boring that people stop talking
- convertible currency — A convertible currency is a currency that can be bought and sold on the open market for other currencies.
- coordination complex — one of a number of complex compounds in which an atom or group of atoms is bound to the central atom by a shared pair of electrons supplied by the coordinated group and not by the central atom
- core gender identity — a person's inner sense of being male or female, usually developed during early childhood as a result of parental rearing practices and societal influences and strengthened during puberty by hormonal changes.
- 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
- corresponding angles — a pair of nonadjacent angles, one interior and one exterior, on the same side of a transversal: these paired angles are equal if the lines cut by the transversal are parallel
- council of ministers — the EU's most important decision-making body
- council of the reich — the Reichsrat.
- council-manager plan — (in the US) a system of local government with an elected legislative council and an appointed administrative manager
- counter-inflationary — designed to reduce inflation
- counter-intelligence — Counter-intelligence consists of actions that a country takes in order to find out whether another country is spying on it and to prevent it from doing so.
- counterdemonstration — a demonstration that is held in reaction to another demonstration