16-letter words containing k, n, e, c
- chinese checkers — a game played on a board with holes arranged in the shape of a six-pointed star, by from two to six players, the winner being the one who first moves his or her set of marbles across the board
- clackmannanshire — a council area and historical county of central Scotland; became part of the Central region in 1975 but reinstated as an independent unitary authority in 1996; mainly agricultural. Administrative centre: Alloa. Pop: 47 680 (2003 est). Area: 142 sq km (55 sq miles)
- cloak-and-dagger — A cloak-and-dagger activity is one which involves mystery and secrecy.
- cloak-and-suiter — a manufacturer or seller of clothing.
- cocktail cabinet — a cupboard in which glasses and bottles are kept
- common knowledge — something widely or generally known
- commonplace book — a notebook in which quotations, poems, remarks, etc, that catch the owner's attention are entered
- community worker — someone who works for the benefit of a community, esp for a social service agency
- computer network — network
- concatenated key — compound key
- confidence trick — A confidence trick is a trick in which someone deceives you by telling you something that is not true, often to trick you out of money.
- control freakery — an obsessive need to be in control of what is happening
- cooperative bank — a cooperative savings institution, chartered and regulated by a state or the federal government, that receives deposits in exchange for shares of ownership and invests its funds chiefly in loans secured by first mortgages on homes.
- cornhusker state — Nebraska (used as a nickname).
- counter-checking — a check that opposes or restrains.
- counterattacking — Present participle of counterattack.
- counterclockwise — If something is moving counterclockwise, it is moving in the opposite direction to the direction in which the hands of a clock move.
- cracked fraction — A cracked fraction is a petroleum fraction (= a portion separated according to a physical property) that has been broken down from a fraction with larger molecules.
- crowd one's luck — to take unnecessary risks in an already favorable situation
- curbstone broker — a broker in the early American stockmarket who did business in the street
- day of reckoning — If someone talks about the day of reckoning, they mean a day or time in the future when people will be forced to deal with an unpleasant situation which they have avoided until now.
- dictionary-maker — a person who compiles a dictionary
- direct marketing — marketing direct to the consumer, as by direct mail or coupon advertising.
- downy woodpecker — a small, North American woodpecker, Picoides pubescens, having black and white plumage.
- ducks and drakes — Also, duck and drake. a pastime in which flat stones or shells are thrown across water so as to skip over the surface several times before sinking.
- educational park — a group of elementary and high schools, usually clustered in a parklike setting and having certain facilities shared by all grades, that often accommodates students from a large area.
- electric blanket — electrically-heated bedcover
- embarkation card — an official document that allows travellers to leave a country by boarding a ship or plane
- emergency worker — a person whose job is to help people in emergencies
- exclamation mark — (character) The character "!" with ASCII code 33. Common names: bang; pling; excl (/eks'kl/); shriek; ITU-T: exclamation mark, exclamation point (US). Rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey; wham; eureka; soldier; INTERCAL: spark-spot. The Commonwealth Hackish, "pling", is common among Acorn Archimedes owners. Bang is more common in the USA. The occasional CMU usage, "shriek", is also used by APL fans and mathematicians, especially category theorists. Exclamation mark is used in C and elsewhere as the logical negation operation (NOT).
- falling sickness — epilepsy.
- feedback control — (electronics) A control system which monitors its effect on the system it is controlling and modifies its output accordingly. For example, a thermostat has two inputs: the desired temperature and the current temperature (the latter is the feedback). The output of the thermostat changes so as to try to equalise the two inputs. Computer disk drives use feedback control to position the read/write heads accurately on a recording track. Complex systems such as the human body contain many feedback systems that interact with each other; the homeostasis mechanisms that control body temperature and acidity are good examples.
- ferruginous duck — a common European duck, Aythyra nyroca, having reddish-brown plumage with white wing bars
- formation packer — A formation packer is a substance that is used as a seal between the casing and the borehole so that part of the hole can be tested.
- franking machine — a machine that franks letters
- german cockroach — a common yellowish-brown cockroach, Blatta germanica, brought into the U.S. from Europe.
- get on your wick — If you say that someone or something gets on your wick, you mean that they annoy and irritate you.
- government stock — stock issued by the UK or another national government
- green woodpecker — a woodpecker, Picus viridis, of Eurasia and northern Africa, having green plumage with a yellow rump and red on the top of the head.
- guaranteed stock — stock for which dividends are guaranteed by a company other than the one issuing the stock.
- hard-packed snow — snow which becomes very firmly packed as it becomes refrozen due to cold weather conditions rather than melting
- hen-and-chickens — any of several succulent plants that grow in clusters or colonies formed by runners or offshoots, as those of the genera Echeveria and Sempervivum.
- horseback riding — activity: riding a horse
- huckleberry finn — (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) a novel (1884) by Mark Twain.
- in a cleft stick — If you say that a person or organization is in a cleft stick, you mean that they are in a difficult situation which will bring them problems and harm whatever they decide to do.
- in lockstep with — progressing at exactly the same speed and in the same direction as other people or things, esp as a matter of course rather than by choice
- induction stroke — The induction stroke is the stroke of the piston in an internal combustion engine in which working fluid is drawn into the cylinder.
- insurance broker — person who sells insurance policies
- inter-packet gap — (networking) A time delay between successive data packets mandated by the network standard for protocol reasons. In Ethernet, the medium has to be "silent" (i.e., no data transfer) for a few microseconds before a node can consider the network idle and start to transmit. This is necessary for fairness reasons. The delay time, which approximately equals the signal propagation time on the cable, allows the "silence" to reach the far end so that all nodes consider the net idle.
- j. random hacker — (jargon) /J rand'm hak'r/ MIT jargon for a mythical figure; the archetypal hacker nerd. This may originally have been inspired by "J. Fred Muggs", a show-biz chimpanzee whose name was a household word back in the early days of TMRC, and was probably influenced by J. Presper Eckert (one of the co-inventors of the electronic computer). See random, Suzie COBOL.