16-letter words containing i, n, s, t, c
- archaeomagnetism — an archaeological technique for dating certain clay objects by measuring the extent to which they have been magnetized by the earth's magnetic field
- archconservative — consistently holding extremely conservative views: publisher of the city's archconservative newspaper.
- arsenic trioxide — a white poisonous powder used in the manufacture of glass and as an insecticide, rat poison, and weedkiller. Formula: As2O3
- arthus' reaction — a severe, local immune reaction to the injection of an antigen in a sensitized host.
- artistic license — (legal) The open source license applicable to Perl.
- as distinct from — If you say that you are talking about one thing as distinct from another, you are indicating exactly which thing you mean.
- ascending rhythm — rising rhythm.
- ascidian tadpole — the free-swimming larva of an ascidian, having a tadpole-like tail containing the notochord and nerve cord
- asiatic elephant — Indian elephant. See under elephant.
- association area — any of the regions of the cerebral cortex of the brain connected by numerous nerve fibers to all parts of both cerebral hemispheres and coordinating such higher activities as learning and reasoning.
- associationistic — Of or pertaining to associationism.
- athanasian creed — a profession of faith widely used in the Western Church which, although formerly attributed to Athanasius, probably originated in Gaul between 381 and 428 ad
- atomic mass unit — a unit of mass used to express atomic and molecular weights that is equal to one twelfth of the mass of an atom of carbon-12. It is equivalent to 1.66 × 10–27 kg
- atwood's machine — a device consisting of two unequal masses connected by a string passed over a pulley, used to illustrate the laws of motion.
- australian crawl — a stroke in which the feet are kicked like paddles while the arms reach forward and pull back through the water
- axminster carpet — a type of patterned carpet with a cut pile
- bare necessities — only the essentials
- bastard culverin — a 16th-century cannon, smaller than a culverin, firing a shot of between 5 and 8 pounds (11 and 17.6 kg).
- batch processing — manufacturing products or treating materials in batches, by passing the output of one process to subsequent processes
- batesian mimicry — mimicry in which a harmless species is protected from predators by means of its resemblance to a harmful or inedible species
- bbn technologies — (company) A company, originally known as Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN), based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. BBN were awarded the original contract to build the ARPANET and have been extensively involved in Internet development. They are responsible for managing NNSC, CSNET, and NEARnet. The language LOGO was developed at BBN, as was the BBN Butterfly supercomputer.
- be of assistance — Someone or something that is of assistance to you is helpful or useful to you.
- bearish tendency — a tendency for share prices to fall
- beta abstraction — [lambda-calculus] The conversion of an expression to an application of a lambda abstraction to an argument expression. Some subterm of the original expression becomes the argument of the abstraction and the rest becomes its body. E.g. 4+1 --> (\ x . x+1) 4 The opposite of beta abstraction is beta reduction. These are the two kinds of beta conversion.
- bicapitalisation — The act said to have been performed on trademarks (such as PostScript, NeXT, NeWS, VisiCalc, FrameMaker, TK!solver, EasyWriter) that have been raised above the ruck of common coinage by nonstandard capitalisation. Too many marketroid types think this sort of thing is really cute, even the 2,317th time they do it. Compare studlycaps.
- black nightshade — a poisonous solanaceous plant, Solanum nigrum, a common weed in cultivated land, having small white flowers with backward-curved petals and black berry-like fruits
- bodily functions — physical processes such as urination and defecation
- boston cream pie — a cake of two layers with icing and a creamy filling
- bragg scattering — the diffraction phenomenon exhibited by a crystal bombarded with x-rays in such a way that each plane of the crystal lattice acts as a reflector (Bragg reflector)
- braking distance — the distance a vehicle travels from the point at which its brakes are applied to the point at which it comes to a stop
- branchiopneustic — breathing by means of gills, as certain aquatic insect larvae.
- breast screening — a radiological or other examination of a woman's breasts to check for signs of cancer
- bring to justice — to capture, try, and usually punish (a criminal, an outlaw, etc)
- bristlecone pine — a coniferous tree, Pinus aristata, of the western US, bearing cones with bristle-like prickles: one of the longest-lived trees, useful in radiocarbon dating
- bronchial asthma — asthma.
- building society — In Britain, a building society is a business which will lend you money when you want to buy a house. You can also invest money in a building society, where it will earn interest. Compare savings and loan association.
- bullying tactics — the use of intimidation to gain one's objective
- business account — a bank account or type of bank account used for business transactions rather than personal ones
- cabinet minister — a minister who is a member of the cabinet
- cable television — Cable television is a television system in which signals are sent along wires rather than by radio waves.
- cache on a stick — (architecture) (COAST) Intel Corporation attempt to's standardise the modular L2 cache subsystem in Pentium-based computers. A COAST module should be about 4.35" wide by 1.14" high. According to earlier specifications from Motorola, a module between 4.33" and 4.36" wide, and between 1.12" and 1.16" high is within the COAST standard. Some module vendors, including some major motherboard suppliers, greatly violate the height specification. Another COAST specification violated by many suppliers concerns clock distribution in synchronous modules. The specification requires that the clock tree to each synchronous chip be balanced, i.e. equal length from edge of the connector to individual chips. An unbalanced clock tree increases reflections and noise. For a 256 kilobyte cache module the standard requires the same clock be used for both chips but some vendors use separate clocks to reduce loading on the clock driver and hence increase the clock speed. However, this creates unbalanced loading in other motherboard configurations, such as motherboards with soldered caches in the system.
- calcium arsenate — a toxic, white powder, Ca3(AsO4)2, used as an insecticide in the form of a spray or dust
- call in question — a sentence in an interrogative form, addressed to someone in order to get information in reply.
- canaries current — an ocean current of the North Atlantic flowing southward past Spain and North Africa.
- canine distemper — distemper1 (def 1a).
- capital sentence — the punishment of death for a crime
- capsizing moment — the moment of an upsetting couple.
- cardinal virtues — the most important moral qualities, traditionally justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude
- carrot and stick — If an organization has a carrot and stick approach or policy, they offer people things in order to persuade them to do something and punish them if they refuse to do it.
- case insensitive — case sensitivity