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18-letter words containing i, s, u, e

  • concrete universal — a principle that necessarily has universal import but is also concrete by virtue of its arising in historical situations.
  • concussion grenade — a grenade designed to inflict damage by the force of its detonation rather than by the fragmentation of its casing.
  • congregate housing — a type of housing in which each individual or family has a private bedroom or living quarters but shares with other residents a common dining room, recreational room, or other facilities.
  • conjugate solution — a system of liquids, each partially miscible in the other, existing with a common interface, consisting of a saturated solution of one in the other.
  • consequential loss — A consequential loss is a loss that follows another loss that is caused by a danger that has been insured against.
  • considered harmful — (programming, humour)   A type of phrase based on the title of Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous note in the March 1968 Communications of the ACM, "Goto Statement Considered Harmful", which fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars. Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently harmful that it will (by policy) no longer print articles taking so assertive a position against a coding practice. In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and parodies bore titles of the form "X considered Y". The structured-programming wars eventually blew over with the realisation that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has remained as a persistent minor in-joke.
  • constituency party — a branch of a political party operating within a constituency
  • constitution state — Connecticut (used as a nickname).
  • constitutionalized — Simple past tense and past participle of constitutionalize.
  • construction paper — Construction paper is a type of stiff, colored paper that children use for drawing and for making things.
  • constructive proof — (mathematics)   A proof that something exists that provides an example or a method for actually constructing it. For example, for any pair of finite real numbers n < 0 and p > 0, there exists a real number 0 < k < 1 such that f(k) = (1-k)*n + k*p = 0. A constructive proof would proceed by rearranging the above to derive an equation for k: k = 1/(1-n/p) From this and the constraints on n and p, we can show that 0 < k < 1. A few mathematicians actually reject *all* non-constructive arguments as invalid; this means, for instance, that the law of the excluded middle (either P or not-P must hold, whatever P is) has to go; this makes proof by contradiction invalid. See intuitionistic logic. Constructive proofs are popular in theoretical computer science, both because computer scientists are less given to abstraction than mathematicians and because intuitionistic logic turns out to be an appropriate theoretical treatment of the foundations of computer science.
  • consumer terrorism — the practice of introducing dangerous substances to foodstuffs or other consumer products, esp to extort money from the manufacturers
  • contents insurance — the insurance for the personal property in a household
  • continuation sheet — (in a document) a page that continues from the one before it, containing similar information
  • continuous process — A continuous process is a process in which the product comes out without interruption and not in groups.
  • cornell university — (body, education)   A US Ivy League University founded in 1868 by businessman Ezra Cornell and respected scholar Andrew Dickson White. Cornell includes thirteen colleges and schools. On the Ithaca campus are the seven undergraduate units and four graduate and professional units. The Medical College and the Graduate School of Medical Sciences are in New York City. Cornell has 13,300 undergraduates and 6,200 graduate and professional students. See also Concurrent ML, Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University Programming Language, CU-SeeMe, ISIS.
  • cornucopian thesis — the belief that, as long as science and technology continue to advance, growth can continue for ever because these new advances create new resources
  • counseling service — an advice service
  • counter-aggression — the action of a state in violating by force the rights of another state, particularly its territorial rights; an unprovoked offensive, attack, invasion, or the like: The army is prepared to stop any foreign aggression.
  • counter-hypothesis — a proposition, or set of propositions, set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena, either asserted merely as a provisional conjecture to guide investigation (working hypothesis) or accepted as highly probable in the light of established facts.
  • counterattractions — Plural form of counterattraction.
  • counterculturalism — The counterculture movement or lifestyle.
  • counterculturalist — the culture and lifestyle of those people, especially among the young, who reject or oppose the dominant values and behavior of society.
  • counterproposition — a proposition made in place of or in opposition to a preceding one.
  • counterrevolutions — Plural form of counterrevolution.
  • countryside agency — (in England) a government agency that promotes the conservation and enjoyment of the countryside and aims to stimulate employment in rural areas
  • creeping featurism — (jargon)   /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ (Or "feature creep") A systematic tendency to load more chrome and features onto systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed when originally designed. "The main problem with BSD Unix has always been creeping featurism." More generally, creeping featurism is the tendency for anything to become more complicated because people keep saying "Gee, it would be even better if it had this feature too". The result is usually a patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra little feature to help someone, and then another, and another, .... When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a cancer. Usually this term is used to describe computer programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the IRS 1040 form, and new cars. A similar phenomenon sometimes afflicts conscious redesigns; see second-system effect. See also creeping elegance.
  • crude oil desalter — A crude oil desalter is equipment which removes inorganic salts from crude oil, using chemical or electrostatic separation.
  • cultural diversity — the cultural variety and cultural differences that exist in the world, a society, or an institution: Dying languages and urbanization are threats to cultural diversity.
  • cultural universal — a cultural pattern extant in every known society.
  • cumulative scoring — a method of scoring in which the score of a partnership is taken as the sum of their scores on all hands played.
  • cursor dipped in x — (jargon)   The metaphorical source of the electronic equivalent of a poisoned-pen letter. Derived from English metaphors of the form "pen dipped in X" (where X = e.g. "acid", "bile", "vitriol"). These map over neatly to this hackish usage (the cursor being what moves, leaving letters behind, when one is composing on-line). "Talk about a nastygram! He must've had his cursor dipped in acid when he wrote that one!"
  • cushing's syndrome — a medical condition characterized by obesity, hypertension, excessive hair growth, etc., caused by an overactive adrenal gland or large doses of corticosteroids
  • custodial sentence — a sentence given by a court that involves a term of imprisonment
  • customer relations — Customer relations are the relationships that a business has with its customers and the way in which it treats them.
  • customs and excise — Customs and Excise is a British government department which is responsible for collecting taxes on imported and exported goods. Compare Customs Service.
  • customs inspection — an inspection carried out by a customs department
  • debt restructuring — Debt restructuring is a method of organizing a company's debts in a different way in order to make the company more likely to be able to pay them.
  • decision procedure — a procedure, as an algorithm, for determining in a finite number of steps the validity of any of a certain class of propositions.
  • deductive database — (database)   A combination of a conventional database containing facts, a knowledge base containing rules, and an inference engine which allows the derivation of information implied by the facts and rules. Commonly, the knowledge base is expressed in a subset of first-order logic and either a SLDNF or Datalog inference engine is used.
  • deep-discount bond — a fixed-interest security that pays little or no interest but is issued at a substantial discount to its redemption value, thus largely substituting capital gain for income
  • deinstitutionalize — to discharge (a patient) as from a mental institution
  • delmarva peninsula — a peninsula of the northeast US, between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic
  • descriptive clause — a relative clause that describes or supplements but is not essential in establishing the identity of the antecedent and is usually set off by commas in English. In This year, which has been dry, is bad for crops the clause which has been dry is a nonrestrictive clause.
  • desiderius erasmus — Desiderius [des-i-deer-ee-uh s] /ˌdɛs ɪˈdɪər i əs/ (Show IPA), 1466?–1536, Dutch humanist, scholar, theologian, and writer.
  • desktop publishing — Desktop publishing is the production of printed materials such as newspapers and magazines using a desktop computer and a laser printer, rather than using conventional printing methods. The abbreviation DTP is also used.
  • destruct mechanism — a mechanism that causes the destruction of a rocket or missile when activated
  • devil's paintbrush — a perennial European hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum) with leafless flower stalks bearing a cluster of orange-red heads: now a common weed in N U.S. and Canada
  • dia de los muertos — Day of the Dead.
  • diabetes insipidus — a disorder of the pituitary gland causing excessive thirst and excretion of large quantities of dilute urine
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