0%

21-letter words containing i, t, e, r, a

  • broadleaved whitebeam — a whitebeam, Sorbus latifolia, widely found in France and England, also planted as an ornamental
  • bromine pentafluoride — a colorless, corrosive liquid, BrF 5 , used as an oxidizer in liquid rocket propellants.
  • bulletin board system — (communications, application)   (BBS, bboard /bee'bord/, message board, forum; plural: BBSes) A computer and associated software which typically provides an electronic message database where people can log in and leave messages. Messages are typically split into topic groups similar to the newsgroups on Usenet (which is like a distributed BBS). Any user may submit or read any message in these public areas. The term comes from physical pieces of board on which people can pin messages written on paper for general consumption - a "physical bulletin board". Ward Christensen, the programmer and operator of the first BBS (on-line 1978-02-16) called it a CBBS for "computer bulletin board system". Since the rise of the World-Wide Web, the term has become antiquated, though the concept is more popular than ever, with many websites featuring discussion areas where users can post messages for public consumption. Apart from public message areas, some BBSes provided archives of files, personal electronic mail and other services of interest to the system operator (sysop). Thousands of BBSes around the world were run from amateurs' homes on MS-DOS boxes with a single modem line each. Although BBSes were traditionally the domain of hobbyists, many connected directly to the Internet (accessed via telnet), others were operated by government, educational, and research institutions. Fans of Usenet or the big commercial time-sharing bboards such as CompuServe, CIX and GEnie tended to consider local BBSes the low-rent district of the hacker culture, but they helped connect hackers and users in the personal-micro and let them exchange code. Use of this term for a Usenet newsgroup generally marks one either as a newbie fresh in from the BBS world or as a real old-timer predating Usenet.
  • bursting at the seams — If a place is very full, you can say that it is bursting at the seams.
  • cantilever foundation — a building foundation supporting its load partly or wholly upon cantilevers.
  • carrie chapman l catt — Carrie Chapman Lane, 1859–1947, U.S. leader in women's suffrage movements.
  • cartesian coordinates — a system of representing points in space in terms of their distance from a given origin measured along a set of mutually perpendicular axes. Written (x,y,z) with reference to three axes
  • category merchandiser — A category merchandiser is a person whose job is to maintain stocks, manage displays and promote sales of a certain product category such as footwear.
  • catherine of braganza — 1638–1705, wife of Charles II of England, daughter of John IV of Portugal
  • cause-effect graphing — (programming)   A testing technique that aids in selecting, in a systematic way, a high-yield set of test cases that logically relates causes to effects to produce test cases. It has a beneficial side effect in pointing out incompleteness and ambiguities in specifications.
  • caviar to the general — a thing appealing only to a highly cultivated taste: Hamlet II, ii
  • central daylight time — the time observed in the Central Time Zone of the United states when Daylight Savings Time is in effect; GMT -5
  • central european time — the standard time adopted by Western European countries one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, corresponding to British Summer Time
  • central limit theorem — any of several theorems stating that the sum of a number of random variables obeying certain conditions will assume a normal distribution as the number of variables becomes large.
  • central standard time — one of the standard times used in North America, based on the local time of the 90° meridian, six hours behind Greenwich Mean Time
  • certificate authority — (cryptography, body)   (CA or "Trusted Third Party") An entity (typically a company) that issues digital certificates to other entities (organisations or individuals) to allow them to prove their identity to others. A Certificate Authority might be an external company such as VeriSign that offers digital certificate services or they might be an internal organisation such as a corporate MIS department. The Certificate Authority's chief function is to verify the identity of entities and issue digital certificates attesting to that identity. The process uses public key cryptography to create a "network of trust". If I want to prove my identity to you, I ask a CA (who you trust to have verified my identity) to encrypt a hash of my signed key with their private key. Then you can use the CA's public key to decrypt the hash and compare it with a hash you calculate yourself. Hashes are used to decrease the amount of data that needs to be transmitted. The hash function must be cryptographically strong, e.g. MD5.
  • certificate of origin — a document stating the name of the country that produced a specified shipment of goods: often required before importation of goods
  • character recognition — Character recognition is a process which allows computers to recognize written or printed characters such as numbers or letters and to change them into a form that the computer can use.
  • characteristic vector — a vector for which there exists a scalar such that the value of the vector under a given transformation is equal to the scalar times the vector.
  • charity commissioners — (in Britain) members of a commission constituted to keep a register of charities and control charitable trusts
  • cheese and wine party — a party at which cheese and wine are served
  • chief master sergeant — a solider of the highest enlisted rank in the US Air Force
  • chief warrant officer — a senior-ranking warrant officer in various armed forces
  • chinese lantern plant — winter cherry (def 1).
  • chinese water torture — a form of torture in which water is made to drip for a long period of time onto a victim's forehead to drive him insane
  • chinese-lantern plant — a perennial ground-cherry (Physalis alkekengi) grown for winter bouquets because of the bladderlike red calyx that surrounds its small, tomatolike fruit
  • christmas decorations — decorations of different kinds appropriate to Christmas, such as tinsel, candles, images of angels, etc.
  • christmas tree packet — (networking)   (Or kamikaze packet) A packet with every single option set for whatever protocol is in use. The term doubtless derives from a fanciful image of each little option bit being represented by a different-coloured light bulb, all turned on. 10 points for correctly being able to process a "Kamikaze" packet (AKA nastygram, Christmas tree packet, lamp test segment, et al.). That is, correctly handle a segment with the maximum combination of features at once (e.g. a SYN URG PUSH FIN segment with options and data). Compare: Chernobyl packet.
  • circle of declination — hour circle.
  • class-relation method — (programming)   A design technique based on the concepts of object-oriented programming and the Entity-Relationship model from the French company Softeam.
  • clearance certificate — permission for a ship to use, leave, or enter a port
  • clement of alexandria — Saint. original name Titus Flavius Clemens. ?150–?215 ad, Greek Christian theologian: head of the catechetical school at Alexandria; teacher of Origen. Feast day: Dec 5
  • collective bargaining — When a trade union engages in collective bargaining, it has talks with an employer about its members' pay and working conditions.
  • collimator viewfinder — a type of viewfinder in a camera
  • collins street farmer — a businessman who invests in farms, land, etc
  • combination principle — Ritz combination principle.
  • comfortably-furnished — containing comfortable furniture
  • commercial fertilizer — fertilizer manufactured chemically, as distinguished from natural fertilizer, as manure.
  • commercial television — television companies which make money by selling advertising
  • commercial translator — (language)   An English-like pre-COBOL language for business data processing.
  • committal proceedings — a preliminary hearing in a magistrates' court to decide if there is a case to answer
  • committing magistrate — a magistrate who decides if there is enough evidence for a case to proceed
  • common carotid artery — the part of a carotid artery between its origin and its point of division into branches.
  • communications server — (operating system)   IBM's rebranding of ACF.
  • companionate marriage — a proposed system of trial marriage in which the couple would postpone having children and could be divorced by mutual consent, until a final decision to stay married is reached
  • comparative philology — comparative linguistics.
  • comparative statement — a financial statement with figures arranged in two or more parallel columns, each column representing a fiscal year or other period, used to compare performance between periods.
  • compensation neurosis — an unconscious attempt to retain physical or psychological symptoms of illness when some advantage may be obtained (distinguished from malingering).
  • complete metric space — (theory)   A metric space in which every sequence that converges in itself has a limit. For example, the space of real numbers is complete by Dedekind's axiom, whereas the space of rational numbers is not - e.g. the sequence a[0]=1; a[n_+1]:=a[n]/2+1/a[n].
  • completing the square — a method, usually of solving quadratic equations, by which a quadratic expression, as x 2 − 4 x + 3, is written as the sum or difference of a perfect square and a constant, x 2 − 4 x + 4 + 3 − 4 = (x − 2) 2 − 1, by addition and subtraction of appropriate constant terms.
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?