21-letter words containing n, a, p
- be at pains to do sth — If someone is at pains to do something, they are very eager and anxious to do it, especially because they want to avoid a difficult situation.
- be in apple-pie order — If a room or a desk is in apple pie order, it is neat and tidy, and everything is where it should be.
- beta-naphthyl radical — Also called alpha-naphthyl group, alpha-naphthyl radical. the univalent group C 1 0 H 7 –, having a replaceable hydrogen atom in the first, or alpha, position; 1-naphthyl group.
- bibliographic control — the identification, description, analysis, and classification of books and other materials of communication so that they may be effectively organized, stored, retrieved, and used when needed.
- blot on the landscape — If you describe something such as a building as a blot on the landscape, you mean that you think it is very ugly and spoils an otherwise attractive place.
- bluethroat pikeblenny — See under pikeblenny.
- bonnie prince charlie — a member of the royal family that ruled in Scotland from 1371 to 1714 and in England from 1603 to 1714.
- book of common prayer — the official book of church services of the Church of England, until 1980, when the Alternative Service Book was sanctioned
- bottom-up programming — a programming technique in which lower-level modules are developed before higher-level modules.
- brazilian pepper tree — a small Brazilian evergreen tree or shrub, Schinus terebinthifolius, of the cashew family, having inconspicuous white flowers and bright red fruit: the berries are used for Christmas decorations.
- bromine pentafluoride — a colorless, corrosive liquid, BrF 5 , used as an oxidizer in liquid rocket propellants.
- burroughs corporation — (company) A company which merged with Sperry Univac to form Unisys Corporation. They produced the Datatron 200 series among other computers.
- carrie chapman l catt — Carrie Chapman Lane, 1859–1947, U.S. leader in women's suffrage movements.
- castellon de la plana — a port in E Spain. Pop: 160 714 (2003 est)
- 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.
- central european time — the standard time adopted by Western European countries one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, corresponding to British Summer Time
- character development — the portrayal of people in a work of fiction in such a way that the reader or audience seems to learn more about them as they develop
- cheese and wine party — a party at which cheese and wine are served
- chinese lantern plant — winter cherry (def 1).
- 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
- circular polarization — electromagnetic radiation (esp light) in which the electric field vector describes a circle about the direction of propagation at any point in the path of the radiation
- clinical psychologist — a practitioner of clinical psychology
- college of propaganda — information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.
- column chromatography — the separation of mixtures into their constituents by preferential adsorption by a solid, as a column of silica (column chromatography) or a strip of filter paper (paper chromatography) or by a gel.
- combination principle — Ritz combination principle.
- committal proceedings — a preliminary hearing in a magistrates' court to decide if there is a case to answer
- 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 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.
- comparison microscope — a microscope having two objective lenses and using a system of prisms to form in one eyepiece adjacent images of two different objects.
- compensation neurosis — an unconscious attempt to retain physical or psychological symptoms of illness when some advantage may be obtained (distinguished from malingering).
- competitive advantage — an advantage based on success in competition
- 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.
- componential analysis — the analysis of a set of related linguistic items, especially word meanings, into combinations of features in terms of which each item may be compared with every other, as in the analysis of man into the semantic features “male,” “mature,” and “human,” woman into “female,” “mature,” and “human,” girl into “female,” “immature,” and “human,” and bull into “male,” “mature,” and “bovine.”.
- computer aided design — (application) (CAD) The part of CAE concerning the drawing or physical layout steps of engineering design. Often found in the phrase "CAD/CAM" for ".. manufacturing".
- computer-aided design — the use of computer techniques in designing products, esp involving the use of computer graphics
- compuware corporation — (company) A US software and service company established in 1973. Since 1973, Compuware focused on optimising business software development, testing and operation. In 1999 the company had grown to over 15,000 employees worldwide and revenues of more than $1.6B. By 2013 it had shrunk to less than 5000. Current (2013) products and services include performance optimisation, availability and quality of web, non-web, mobile, streaming and cloud applications; project portfolio management, professional services automation; mainframe applications and developer tools; rapid application development and professional services.
- concert grand (piano) — the largest size of grand piano, for concert performance
- conditional operation — a step in a computer program that determines which of two or more instructions or instruction sequences to execute next, depending on whether or not one or more specified conditions have been met.
- cone penetration test — a method of testing soils by pressing a cone of standard dimensions into the soil under a known load and measuring the penetration
- confidence and supply — denoting an arrangement in a hung parliament in which an opposition party agrees not to vote against a minority government in votes of confidence or budgetary matters but reserves the right to oppose other legislation
- conspiracy of silence — If there is a conspiracy of silence about something, people who know about it have agreed that they will not talk publicly about it, although it would probably be a good thing if people in general knew about it.
- cooperative apartment — a block of flats belonging to a corporation in which shares are owned in proportion to the relative value of the flat occupied
- cooperative-apartment — working or acting together willingly for a common purpose or benefit.
- coordination compound — complex (def 10).
- corpus juris canonici — the official compilation of canon law published by authority of Gregory XIII in 1582, superseded by the Codex Juris Canonici in 1918
- corpuscular radiation — radiation consisting of atomic and subatomic particles, as alpha particles, beta particles, and neutrons.
- countably compact set — a set for which every cover consisting of a countable number of sets has a subcover consisting of a finite number of sets.
- counterinterpretation — An interpretation that goes against another interpretation.
- court of common pleas — (formerly) a superior court exercising jurisdiction in civil actions between private citizens
- crankcase compression — Crankcase compression is the method of starting some smaller two-stroke engines, where the mixture charge is compressed in a sealed crankcase by the descending piston before passing to the combustion chamber.