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15-letter words containing m, u, s, i, c

  • combustion tube — a tube of heat-resistant glass, silica, or ceramic, in which a substance can be reduced, as in a combustion furnace
  • come up against — If you come up against a problem or difficulty, you are faced with it and have to deal with it.
  • come up smiling — to recover cheerfully from misfortune
  • communist china — China, People's Republic of.
  • communist party — (in non-Communist countries) a political party advocating Communism
  • communistically — In a communistic manner.
  • community chest — a fund raised by voluntary contribution for local welfare activities
  • compendiousness — The state or quality of being compendious.
  • computer ethics — (philosophy)   Ethics is the field of study that is concerned with questions of value, that is, judgments about what human behaviour is "good" or "bad". Ethical judgments are no different in the area of computing from those in any other area. Computers raise problems of privacy, ownership, theft, and power, to name but a few. Computer ethics can be grounded in one of four basic world-views: Idealism, Realism, Pragmatism, or Existentialism. Idealists believe that reality is basically ideas and that ethics therefore involves conforming to ideals. Realists believe that reality is basically nature and that ethics therefore involves acting according to what is natural. Pragmatists believe that reality is not fixed but is in process and that ethics therefore is practical (that is, concerned with what will produce socially-desired results). Existentialists believe reality is self-defined and that ethics therefore is individual (that is, concerned only with one's own conscience). Idealism and Realism can be considered ABSOLUTIST worldviews because they are based on something fixed (that is, ideas or nature, respectively). Pragmatism and Existentialism can be considered RELATIVIST worldviews because they are based or something relational (that is, society or the individual, respectively). Thus ethical judgments will vary, depending on the judge's world-view. Some examples: First consider theft. Suppose a university's computer is used for sending an e-mail message to a friend or for conducting a full-blown private business (billing, payroll, inventory, etc.). The absolutist would say that both activities are unethical (while recognising a difference in the amount of wrong being done). A relativist might say that the latter activities were wrong because they tied up too much memory and slowed down the machine, but the e-mail message wasn't wrong because it had no significant effect on operations. Next consider privacy. An instructor uses her account to acquire the cumulative grade point average of a student who is in a class which she instructs. She obtained the password for this restricted information from someone in the Records Office who erroneously thought that she was the student's advisor. The absolutist would probably say that the instructor acted wrongly, since the only person who is entitled to this information is the student and his or her advisor. The relativist would probably ask why the instructor wanted the information. If she replied that she wanted it to be sure that her grading of the student was consistent with the student's overall academic performance record, the relativist might agree that such use was acceptable. Finally, consider power. At a particular university, if a professor wants a computer account, all she or he need do is request one but a student must obtain faculty sponsorship in order to receive an account. An absolutist (because of a proclivity for hierarchical thinking) might not have a problem with this divergence in procedure. A relativist, on the other hand, might question what makes the two situations essentially different (e.g. are faculty assumed to have more need for computers than students? Are students more likely to cause problems than faculty? Is this a hold-over from the days of "in loco parentis"?).
  • computer vision — a robot analogue of human vision in which information about the environment is received by one or more video cameras and processed by computer: used in navigation by robots, in the control of automated production lines, etc.
  • computerisation — (chiefly, British) alternative spelling of computerization.
  • constructionism — an educational theory holding that children learn most effectively when actively doing, or constructing, things, rather than being taught information in a traditional schooling method
  • consulting room — A doctor's or therapist's consulting room is the room in which they see their patients.
  • consumer choice — the range of competing products and services from which a consumer can choose
  • consumer credit — Consumer credit is money that is lent to people by organizations such as banks, building societies, and shops so that they can buy things.
  • consumer strike — a boycott of a product by consumers, often in protest over a raise in its price.
  • consumption tax — a tax, as a sales tax, levied on consumer goods or services at the time of sale.
  • continuous-form — of or relating to paper, blank forms, checks, etc., supplied in a folded stack or roll to a device, as a computer printer, generally with perforations between sheets for later separation and often with detachable punched edges used to advance the sheets through the device.
  • contrast medium — a radiopaque substance, such as barium sulphate, used to increase the contrast of an image in radiography
  • corpus striatum — a striped mass of white and grey matter situated in front of the thalamus in each cerebral hemisphere
  • coumarone resin — any of the group of thermosetting resins derived by the polymerization of mixtures of coumarone and indene: used chiefly in the manufacture of paints, varnishes, and printing inks.
  • court of claims — (in the US) a court that hears claims against the federal government
  • cromolyn sodium — a substance, C 23 H 14 Na 2 O 11 , used as a preventive inhalant for bronchial asthma and hay fever.
  • croque-monsieur — a sandwich filled with ham and cheese, either dipped in egg batter or buttered on the outside, and toasted or grilled
  • cryptosporidium — any parasitic sporozoan protozoan of the genus Cryptosporidium, species of which are parasites of birds and animals and can be transmitted to humans, causing severe abdominal pain and diarrhoea (cryptosporidiosis)
  • cucumber mosaic — a viral disease of cucumbers and many other plants, characterized by a mosaic pattern and distortion of leaves and fruits.
  • cuisine minceur — a style of cooking, originating in France, that limits the use of starch, sugar, butter, and cream traditionally used in French cookery
  • cum grano salis — with a grain of salt; not too literally
  • customer-facing — interacting or communicating directly with customers
  • customs officer — a person employed by a customs service
  • customs service — The Customs Service is a United States federal organization which is responsible for collecting taxes on imported and exported goods. Compare Customs and Excise.
  • cytomegalovirus — a virus of the herpes virus family that may cause serious disease in patients whose immune systems are compromised
  • dartmouth basic — (language)   The original BASIC language, designed by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1963. Dartmouth BASIC first ran on a GE 235 [date?] and on an IBM 704 on 1964-05-01. It was designed for quick and easy programming by students and beginners using Dartmouth's experimental time-sharing system. Unlike most later BASIC dialects, Dartmouth BASIC was compiled.
  • demulsification — to break down (an emulsion) into separate substances incapable of re-forming the emulsion that was broken down.
  • deus ex machina — (in ancient Greek and Roman drama) a god introduced into a play to resolve the plot
  • deuteronomistic — one of the writers of material used in the early books of the Old Testament.
  • dichotomous key — a key used to identify a plant or animal in which each stage presents descriptions of two distinguishing characters, with a direction to another stage in the key, until the species is identified
  • dichotomousness — the quality of being dichotomous
  • discombobulated — to confuse or disconcert; upset; frustrate: The speaker was completely discombobulated by the hecklers.
  • discombobulates — Third-person singular simple present indicative form of discombobulate.
  • discount market — a trading market in which notes, bills, and other negotiable instruments are discounted.
  • domain calculus — (database)   A form of relational calculus in which scalar variables take values drawn from a given domain. Examples of the domain calculus are ILL, FQL, DEDUCE and the well known Query By Example (QBE). INGRES is a relational DBMS whose DML is based on the relational calculus.
  • dutchman's-pipe — a climbing vine, Aristolochia durior, of the birthwort family, having large, heart-shaped leaves and brownish-purple flowers of a curved form suggesting a tobacco pipe.
  • echinodermatous — belonging or pertaining to the echinoderms.
  • eclipse plumage — the dull plumage developed in some brightly colored birds after the breeding season.
  • ethnomusicology — The study of the music of different cultures, especially non-Western ones.
  • euphemistically — In a euphemistic manner.
  • excrementitious — Of or pertaining to the nature of excrement.
  • fifth columnist — A fifth columnist is someone who secretly supports and helps the enemies of the country or organization they are in.
  • flavourdynamics — as in quantum flavour dynamics, a mathematical model used to describe the interaction of flavoured particles (weak force) through the exchange of intermediate vector bosons
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