18-letter words containing l, a, m
- categorial grammar — a theory that characterizes syntactic categories in terms of functions between classes of expressions. The basic classes are names (N) and sentences (S). Intransitive verbs are symbols for functions which take a name and yield a sentence (written S/N), adverbs form compound verbs from verbs (for example, run fast) and so are (S/N)/(S/N), etc
- catskill mountains — a mountain range in SE New York State: resort. Highest peak: Slide Mountain, 1261 m (4204 ft)
- celestial marriage — the rite or state of marriage, performed in a Mormon temple by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and believed to continue beyond death.
- cellular automaton — (algorithm, parallel) (CA, plural "- automata") A regular spatial lattice of "cells", each of which can have any one of a finite number of states. The state of all cells in the lattice are updated simultaneously and the state of the entire lattice advances in discrete time steps. The state of each cell in the lattice is updated according to a local rule which may depend on the state of the cell and its neighbors at the previous time step. Each cell in a cellular automaton could be considered to be a finite state machine which takes its neighbours' states as input and outputs its own state. The best known example is J.H. Conway's game of Life.
- central government — the government of a state or country
- centum call second — (unit) (CCS) A unit used (in North America) to quantify the total traffic running in a network. 1 CCS is 100 call-seconds. That means 1 CCS could be 2 calls of 50 seconds duration or 20 calls of 5 seconds duration.
- cerebral dominance — the normal tendency for one half of the brain, usually the left cerebral hemisphere in right-handed people, to exercise more control over certain functions (e.g. handedness and language) than the other
- chambered nautilus — nautilus (def 1).
- chemical machining — the shaping of a metal part by controlled removal of unwanted metal by a flow of chemical solutions
- chemical potential — a thermodynamic function of a substance in a system that is the partial differential of the Gibbs function of the system with respect to the number of moles of the substance
- chemical pregnancy — a pregnancy that is confirmed by a pregnancy test but not by clinical signs and terminates before clinical signs can be observed.
- chinese watermelon — a tropical Asian vine, Benincasa hispida, of the gourd family, having a brown, hairy stem, large, solitary, yellow flowers, and white, melonlike fruit.
- chlorobromomethane — a clear, colorless, volatile, nonflammable liquid, CH 2 ClBr, used chiefly as an extinguishing agent in fire extinguishers and as a solvent in organic synthesis.
- cholangiocarcinoma — (pathology) Cancer of the bile duct.
- chromolithographer — One engaged in chromolithography.
- chromolithographic — Pertaining to, or made by, chromolithography.
- chronic alcoholism — long-term alcohol addiction
- circular dichroism — selective absorption of one of the two possible circular polarizations of light.
- circulating medium — currency serving as a medium of exchange
- circulatory system — the system concerned with the transport of blood and lymph, consisting of the heart, blood vessels, lymph vessels, etc
- circumnavigational — Relating to circumnavigation.
- citizen journalism — the involvement of non-professionals in reporting news, esp in blogs and other websites
- classical armenian — the oldest form of the Armenian language according to written sources, in use from the 5th to the 18th century.
- climbing hydrangea — a woody vine, Hydrangea anomala, of eastern Asia, having shiny, egg-shaped leaves and flat-topped white flower clusters, and climbing by aerial rootlets.
- clobbering machine — pressure to conform with accepted standards
- coffee-table music — unadventurous music
- collision diameter — the distance between the centers of two colliding molecules when at their closest point of approach.
- colour commentator — a sports celebrity who works as part of a commentary team
- colour temperature — the temperature of a black-body radiator at which it would emit radiation of the same chromaticity as the light under consideration
- commedia dell'arte — a form of popular comedy developed in Italy during the 16th to 18th centuries, with stock characters such as Punchinello, Harlequin, and Columbine, in situations improvised from a plot outline
- commendation medal — a U.S. military decoration awarded for meritorious achievement or service
- commercial attache — an attaché in an embassy or legation representing the commercial interests of his or her country.
- commercial college — a college providing tuition in commercial skills, such as shorthand and book-keeping
- commercial vehicle — a vehicle for carrying goods or (less commonly) passengers
- committed facility — an agreement by a bank to provide a customer with funds up to a specified limit at a specified rate of interest
- common-law husband — a man considered to be a woman's husband after the couple have cohabited for several years
- commonwealth games — an event held every four years in which sportspeople from the countries of the Commonwealth compete
- communication line — a line carrying communications
- community hospital — (in the US) a local hospital
- community language — a language spoken by members of a minority group or community within a majority language context
- companion planting — the cultivation of different types of plants in close proximity so as to benefit each other, as planting a deer-repellent plant in a flower garden.
- compartmentalizing — Present participle of compartmentalize.
- compassionlessness — The quality, state, or condition of being compassionless; uncompassion.
- complementarianism — The doctrine that genders in a society should have complementary roles.
- complementary base — either of the nucleotide bases linked by a hydrogen bond on opposite strands of DNA or double-stranded RNA: guanine is the complementary base of cytosine, and adenine is the complementary base of thymine in DNA and of uracil in RNA.
- complementary gene — one of a pair of genes, each from different loci, that together are required for the expression of a certain characteristic
- complexity measure — (algorithm) A quantity describing the complexity of a computation.
- compliance officer — a specialist, usually a lawyer, employed by a financial group operating in a variety of fields and for multiple clients to ensure that no conflict of interest arises and that all obligations and regulations are complied with
- conceptual realism — the doctrine that universals have real and independent existence.
- 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.