20-letter words containing n, e, u, s
- bring down the house — to receive enthusiastic applause from the audience
- bring the house down — to win great applause
- british thermal unit — a unit of heat in the fps system equal to the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 pound of water by 1°F. 1 British thermal unit is equivalent to 1055.06 joules or 251.997 calories
- brown lung (disease) — a chronic disease of the lungs caused by inhalation of fine textile fibers, esp. cotton; byssinosis
- brown recluse spider — a very poisonous, medium-sized spider (Loxosceles reclusa), common in the U.S., having a violin-shaped mark on its cephalothorax and only six eyes
- buckminsterfullerene — a form of carbon that contains molecules having 60 carbon atoms arranged at the vertices of a polyhedron with hexagonal and pentagonal faces. It is produced in carbon arcs and occurs naturally in small amounts in certain minerals
- bundle of isoglosses — bundle (def 6).
- buoyancy compensator — an inflatable vest used to control one's buoyancy underwater or to rest at the surface, usually having a connecting hose for inflation or deflation by mouth and a CO 2 cartridge for rapid, emergency inflation.
- bureau of the census — the division of the Department of Commerce that gathers, tabulates, and correlates census statistics.
- business to business — (business) (B2B) Electronic commerce between businesses, as opposed to between a consumer and a business (B2C). While derived from "business to business", "B2B" is narrower in meaning.
- bust someone's chops — Usually, chops. the jaw.
- call someone's bluff — to challenge someone to give proof of his claims
- carbon sequestration — the prevention of greenhouse gas build-up in the earth's atmosphere by methods such as planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide or pumping carbon dioxide into underground reservoirs
- card up one's sleeve — a plan or resource kept secret or held in reserve
- casing head pressure — The casing head pressure is the pressure on the casing, which is measured at the wellhead.
- cavalleria rusticana — an opera (1890) by Pietro Mascagni.
- cellular respiration — the oxidation of organic compounds that occurs within cells, producing energy for cellular processes.
- center of percussion — the point on a rigid body, suspended so as to be able to move freely about a fixed axis, at which the body may be struck without changing the position of the axis.
- centrifugal spinning — the spinning of rayon filaments in a centrifugal box.
- channel service unit — (communications) (CSU) A type of interface used to connect a terminal or computer to a digital medium in the same way that a modem is used for connection to an analogue medium. A CSU is provided by the communication carrier to customers who wish to use their own equipment to retime and regenerate the incoming signals. The customer must supply all of the transmit logic, receive logic and timing recovery in order to use the CSU, whereas a digital service unit DSU performs these functions.
- checkbook journalism — the practice of paying for a news story or an interview, or for exclusive broadcasting or publishing rights.
- chief superintendent — an officer of senior rank in a British police force or other similarly organized force
- chikamatsu monzaemon — (born Sugimori Nobumori) 1653-1724; Jpn. dramatist: called the Shakespeare of Japan
- child support agency — the British government agency concerned with the welfare of children
- church commissioners — a group of representatives of Church and State that administers the endowments and property of the Church of England
- clothes manufacturer — a business concern that manufactures clothes
- codex juris canonici — the official code of canon law in force in the Roman Catholic Church; introduced in 1918 and revised in 1983
- collegiate institute — (in certain provinces) a large secondary school with an academic, rather than vocational, emphasis
- colloidal suspension — a mixture having particles of one component, with diameters between 10 −7 and 10 −9 metres, suspended in a continuous phase of another component. The mixture has properties between those of a solution and a fine suspension
- come out in the wash — If you say that something will come out in the wash, you mean that people will eventually find out the truth about it.
- common lodging house — a cheap lodging house
- commune with oneself — to think; ponder
- communication system — (communications) A system or facility for transfering data between persons and equipment. The system usually consists of a collection of individual communication networks, transmission systems, relay stations, tributary stations and terminal equipment capable of interconnection and interoperation so as to form an integrated whole. These individual components must serve a common purpose, be technically compatible, employ common procedures, respond to some form of control and generally operate in unison.
- compensation culture — a culture in which people are very ready to go to law over even relatively minor incidents in the hope of gaining compensation
- complaints procedure — a prescribed method of lodging a complaint to an institution
- computer typesetting — a system for the high-speed composition of type by a device driven by punched paper tape or magnetic tape that has been processed by a computer
- condensation nucleus — nucleus (def 5).
- conditioned stimulus — a stimulus to which an organism has learned to make a response by classical conditioning
- confectioners' sugar — Confectioners' sugar is very fine white sugar that is used for making icing and candy.
- conservative judaism — a movement reacting against the radicalism of Reform Judaism, rejecting extreme change and advocating moderate relaxations of traditional Jewish law, by an extension of the process by which its adherents claim traditional Orthodox Judaism evolved
- constant de rebecque — Henri Benjamin [ahn-ree ban-zha-man] /ɑ̃ˈri bɛ̃ ʒaˈmɛ̃/ (Show IPA), (Benjamin Constant) 1767–1830, French statesman and author, born in Switzerland.
- constituent assembly — A constituent assembly is a body of representatives that is elected to create or change their country's constitution.
- consumer electronics — computers and other electronic devices designed for private individuals as opposed to businesses
- consumer price index — The consumer price index is an official measure of the rate of inflation within a country's economy. The abbreviation CPI is also used.
- context of situation — the totality of extralinguistic features having relevance to a communicative act.
- continuum hypothesis — the assertion that there is no set whose cardinality is greater than that of the integers and smaller than that of the reals
- controlled substance — a drug regulated by the Federal Controlled Substances Acts, including opiates, depressants, stimulants, and hallucinogens
- copulative asyndeton — a staccato effect produced by omitting copulative connectives between two or more items in a group, as in “Friends, Romans, countrymen.”.
- council of ministers — the EU's most important decision-making body
- count one's chickens — If you say that someone is counting their chickens, you mean that they are assuming that they will be successful or get something, when this is not certain.