16-letter words containing n, e, o, t, r
- court appearance — the appearance of an accused person before a court
- court of session — the supreme civil court in Scotland
- covariant theory — the principle that physical laws have the same form and interrelations in any system of coordinates in which they are expressed.
- cowichan sweater — a heavy sweater of grey, unbleached wool with distinctive designs that were originally black-and-white but are now sometimes coloured: knitted originally by Cowichan Indians in British Columbia
- 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.
- craftspersonship — The body of activities, skills, techniques, knowledge, and expertise pertinent to (a) particular craft(s).
- cream of coconut — coconut cream (def 1).
- cream-of-coconut — Also called cream of coconut. a creamy white liquid skimmed from the top of coconut milk that has been made by soaking grated coconut meat in water, used in East Indian cookery, mixed drinks, etc.
- creation science — teaching and research based upon the belief that the biblical account of the creation of the world is scientific fact
- 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.
- creole continuum — a range of language varieties in an area undergoing decreolization showing a continuous gradation from forms more like the underlying creole to those approaching the standard language.
- crime prevention — official and police policies to prevent crime
- 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.
- cromwell current — an equatorial Pacific current, flowing eastward from the Hawaiian Islands to the Galápagos Islands
- 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.
- crosscontaminate — Alternative spelling of cross-contaminate.
- crossopterygians — Plural form of crossopterygian.
- crown prosecutor — In Britain, a crown prosecutor is a lawyer who works for the state and who prosecutes people who are accused of crimes.
- croydon facelift — the tightening effect on the skin of a woman's face caused by securing the hair at the back of the head in a tight ponytail
- cry for the moon — to desire the unattainable
- cryopreservation — the storage of blood or living tissues at extremely cold temperatures, often -196 degrees Celsius.
- curbstone broker — a broker in the early American stockmarket who did business in the street
- curried function — (mathematics, programming) A function of N arguments that is considered as a function of one argument which returns another function of N-1 arguments. E.g. in Haskell we can define: average :: Int -> (Int -> Int) (The parentheses are optional). A partial application of average, to one Int, e.g. (average 4), returns a function of type (Int -> Int) which averages its argument with 4. In uncurried languages a function must always be applied to all its arguments but a partial application can be represented using a lambda abstraction: \ x -> average(4,x) Currying is necessary if full laziness is to be applied to functional sub-expressions. It was named after the logician Haskell Curry but the 19th-century logician, Gottlob Frege was the first to propose it and it was first referred to in ["Uber die Bausteine der mathematischen Logik", M. Schoenfinkel, Mathematische Annalen. Vol 92 (1924)]. Stefan Kahrs <[email protected]> reported hearing somebody in Germany trying to introduce "scho"nen" for currying and "finkeln" for "uncurrying". The verb "scho"nen" means "to beautify"; "finkeln" isn't a German word, but it suggests "to fiddle".
- customary tenant — a tenant occupying a property under the customs of the manor, often a low-status tenant with little security of tenure
- cut one's throat — to bring about one's own ruin
- cutoff frequency — a frequency level above or below which a device fails to respond or operate efficiently
- dangling pointer — (programming) A reference that doesn't actually lead anywhere. In C and some other languages, a pointer that doesn't actually point at anything valid. Usually this happens because it formerly pointed to something that has moved or disappeared, e.g. a heap-allocated block which has been freed and reused. Used as jargon in a generalisation of its technical meaning; for example, a local phone number for a person who has since moved is a dangling pointer.
- dark of the moon — the period during which the moon is not visible.
- darwinian theory — Darwin's theory of evolution, which holds that all species of plants and animals developed from earlier forms by hereditary transmission of slight variations in successive generations, and that natural selection determines which forms will survive
- data compression — the act of compressing.
- data preparation — the process of converting data or information into a form that can be read by a computer, so that the data can then be entered into the computer
- data warehousing — the use of large amounts of data taken from multiple sources to create reports and for data analysis
- davidson current — a winter countercurrent that flows N along the W coast of the U.S.
- dc potentiometer — A DC potentiometer is a potentiometer in which the supply is a battery and the balance is under direct current conditions.
- de-concentration — to reduce the power or control of (a corporation, industry, etc.); decentralize.
- dear john letter — a letter from someone (esp to a man) breaking off a love affair
- dearborn heights — city in SE Mich.: suburb of Detroit: pop. 58,000
- debenture holder — a person or organization holds a debenture
- 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.
- debt forgiveness — the action or process of forgiving people their debts
- decentralisation — Alternative spelling of decentralization.
- decentralization — to distribute the administrative powers or functions of (a central authority) over a less concentrated area: to decentralize the national government.
- decimal fraction — a fraction whose denominator is some power of 10, usually indicated by a dot (decimal point or point) written before the numerator: as 0.4 = 4/10; 0.126 = 126/1000.
- decision support — Software used to aid management decision making, typically relying on a decision support database.
- deconstructively — In a deconstructive manner.
- deflationary gap — a situation in which total spending in an economy is insufficient to buy all the output that can be produced with full employment
- deflecting force — the apparent deflection (Coriolis acceleration) of a body in motion with respect to the earth, as seen by an observer on the earth, attributed to a fictitious force (Coriolis force) but actually caused by the rotation of the earth and appearing as a deflection to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and a deflection to the left in the Southern Hemisphere.