16-letter words containing n, c, s
- creative commons — Sometimes, creative commons. a set of various licenses that allow people to share their copyrighted work to be copied, edited, built upon, etc., while retaining the copyright to the original work (often used attributively): We’re happy for other sites to share these photos under Creative Commons; a creative commons license.
- creative tension — a situation where disagreement or discord ultimately gives rise to better ideas or outcomes
- creditworthiness — having a satisfactory credit rating.
- creeping thistle — a weedy Eurasian thistle, Cirsium arvense, common as a fast-spreading weed in the US
- creme de bananes — a liqueur flavored with bananas.
- crime of passion — a crime, often a murder, committed from passion, esp sexual passion
- crime passionnel — a crime committed from passion, esp sexual passion
- criminal assault — a punishable offence of attempting to harm another person through physical contact
- criminal justice — the system of law enforcement, involving police, lawyers, courts, and corrections, used for all stages of criminal proceedings and punishment.
- critical density — the density of matter that would be required to halt the expansion of the universe
- critical section — A non-re-entrant piece of code that can only be executed by one process at a time. It will usually terminate in bounded time and a process will only have to wait a bounded time to enter it. Some synchronisation mechanism is required at the entry and exit of the critical section to ensure exclusive use.
- cross one's mind — to occur to one briefly or suddenly
- cross protection — the protection against a viral infection given to a plant by its prior inoculation with a related but milder virus
- cross-resistance — immunologic resistance to the pathogenic effects of a microorganism because of previous exposure to another species or type having cross-reactive antigens.
- cross-validation — a process by which a method that works for one sample of a population is checked for validity by applying the method to another sample from the same population.
- crosscontaminate — Alternative spelling of cross-contaminate.
- crossopterygians — Plural form of crossopterygian.
- crowd one's luck — to take unnecessary risks in an already favorable situation
- crown prosecutor — In Britain, a crown prosecutor is a lawyer who works for the state and who prosecutes people who are accused of crimes.
- cryopreservation — the storage of blood or living tissues at extremely cold temperatures, often -196 degrees Celsius.
- crystalline lens — a biconvex transparent elastic structure in the eye situated behind the iris, serving to focus images on the retina
- cumberland sauce — a cold sauce made from orange and lemon juice, port, and redcurrant jelly, served with ham, game, or other meat
- curbstone broker — a broker in the early American stockmarket who did business in the street
- curlew sandpiper — a common Eurasian sandpiper, Calidris ferruginea, having a brick-red breeding plumage and a greyish winter plumage
- curmudgeonliness — The state or condition of being curmudgeonly.
- current expenses — noncapital and usually recurrent expenditures necessary for the operation of a business
- currier and ives — any of a 19th-cent. series of prints showing the manners, people, and events of the times
- customary tenant — a tenant occupying a property under the customs of the manor, often a low-status tenant with little security of tenure
- cut down to size — to reduce the prestige or importance of
- cut of one's jib — one's appearance or way of dressing
- cut one's losses — to give up spending time, money, or energy on an unprofitable or unsuccessful activity
- cut one's throat — to bring about one's own ruin
- cute as a button — very sweet, adorable
- cycle of erosion — the hypothetical sequence of modifications to the earth's surface by erosion, from the original uplift of the land to the ultimate low plain, usually divided into the youthful, mature, and old stages
- cygnus tcl tools — (tool) A rebundling of Tcl and Tk into the Cygnus GNU build framework with "configure" by david d 'zoo' zuhn <[email protected]>.
- cytotechnologist — a technician who specializes in identifying cells and cellular abnormalities.
- dagwood sandwich — a thick sandwich filled with a variety of meats, cheeses, dressings, and condiments.
- darwin's finches — the finches of the subfamily Geospizinae of the Galapagos Islands, showing great variation in bill structure and feeding habits: provided Darwin with evidence to support his theory of evolution
- data abstraction — (data) Any representation of data in which the implementation details are hidden (abstracted). Abstract data types and objects are the two primary forms of data abstraction.
- data acquisition — data logging
- data compression — the act of compressing.
- database machine — (hardware) A computer or special hardware that stores and retrieves data from a database. It is specially designed for database access and is coupled to the main (front-end) computer(s) by a high-speed channel. This contrasts with a database server, which is a computer in a local area network that holds a database. The database machine is tightly coupled to the main CPU, whereas the database server is loosely coupled via the network.
- davidson current — a winter countercurrent that flows N along the W coast of the U.S.
- debating society — a club, e.g. at a school or university, which regularly holds debates
- deboursification — (jargon) Removal of irrelevant newsgroups from the Newsgroups header of a followup. The term applies particularly to the removal of frivolous groups added by one of the Kooks. See also: sneck.
- decentralisation — Alternative spelling of decentralization.
- dechristianizing — Present participle of dechristianize.
- decision problem — (theory) A problem with a yes/no answer. Determining whether some potential solution to a question is actually a solution or not. E.g. "Is 43669" a prime number?". This is in contrast to a "search problem" which must find a solution from scratch, e.g. "What is the millionth prime number?". See decidability.
- decision support — Software used to aid management decision making, typically relying on a decision support database.
- declassification — to remove the classification from (information, a document, etc.) that restricts access in terms of secrecy, confidentiality, etc. Compare classification (def 5).