17-letter words containing n, s, p
- bankruptcy estate — all of the interests that a debtor has at the start of a bankruptcy case
- basic proposition — protocol (def 6).
- be sitting pretty — If you say that someone is sitting pretty, you mean that they are in a good, safe, or comfortable position.
- belleville spring — a spring having the form of a washer or dished disk with an open center, used for cushioning heavy loads with short motion.
- bent out of shape — very angry, upset, or agitated
- beyond comparison — outstanding, without equal
- binary opposition — a relation between the members of a pair of linguistic items, as a pair of distinctive features, such that one is the absence of the other, as voicelessness and voice, or that one is at the opposite pole from the other, as stridency and mellowness.
- bjarne stroustrup — (person) The father of C++ and author of the C++ bible.
- blowpipe analysis — a type of chemical analysis in which the intensely hot flame of a blowpipe vaporizes a mineral or other substance with a characteristically colored flame and a unique odor, so as to identify chemical elements in a substance
- boothia peninsula — a peninsula of N Canada: the northernmost part of the mainland of North America, lying west of the Gulf of Boothia, an arm of the Arctic Ocean
- bottom-up testing — (programming) An integration testing technique that tests the low-level components first using test drivers for those components that have not yet been developed to call the low-level components for test. Compare bottom-up implementation.
- bradford spinning — a wool-spinning method in which the fibers are oiled prior to combing and subsequently spun into worsted yarn.
- brocot escapement — a type of anchor escapement.
- business envelope — an envelope into which standard-size (81⁄2″ × 11″) letterhead stationery can be put with only two folds
- by return of post — by the next mail in the opposite direction
- call-and-response — a form of interaction between a speaker and one or more listeners, in which every utterance of the speaker elicits a verbal or non-verbal response from the listener or listeners
- campus university — a university in which the buildings, often including shops and cafés, are all on one site
- cancer specialist — a medical professional who specializes in the treatment or study of malignant growths or tumours
- candidate species — any plant or animal species that is a candidate for designation as an endangered species or threatened species.
- canine parvovirus — a highly contagious viral disease of dogs characterized by vomiting, haemorrhagic diarrhoea, depression, and, in severe cases, death
- cape barren goose — a greyish Australian goose, Cereopsis novaehollandiae, having a black bill with a greenish cere
- capital gains tax — a tax on the profit made from the sale of an asset
- capital-intensive — Capital-intensive industries and businesses need the investment of large sums of money. Compare labour-intensive.
- captain's biscuit — a type of hard fancy biscuit
- carbon disulphide — a colourless slightly soluble volatile flammable poisonous liquid commonly having a disagreeable odour due to the presence of impurities: used as an organic solvent and in the manufacture of rayon and carbon tetrachloride. Formula: CS2
- carolina allspice — any of a genus (Calycanthus) of hardy shrubs (family Calycanthaceae) of a dicotyledonous order (Laurales) of plants, bearing reddish-brown, sweet-smelling flowers
- cartesian product — the set of all ordered pairs of members of two given sets. The product A × B is the set of all pairs <a, b> where a is a member of A and b is a member of B
- castor and pollux — the twin sons of Leda: Pollux was fathered by Zeus, Castor by the mortal Tyndareus. After Castor's death, Pollux spent half his days with his half-brother in Hades and half with the gods in Olympus
- catastrophization — The act or process of catastrophizing.
- chadless keypunch — (hardware) A card punch which cut little U-shapes in punched cards, rather than punching out a circle or rectangle. The U's made a hole when folded back. One of the Jargon File's correspondents believed that the term "chad" derived from the Chadless keypunch. Obviously, if the Chadless keypunch didn't make them, then the stuff that other keypunches made had to be "chad". The assertion that the keypunch was named after its inventor is not supported by any record in US or UK patents or surname references.
- chapter and verse — If you say that someone gives you chapter and verse on a particular subject, you are emphasizing that they tell you every detail about it.
- chelsea pensioner — an old ex-soldier resident in the Chelsea Royal Hospital
- chest compression — Chest compression is the act of applying pressure to someone's chest in order to help blood flow through the heart in an emergency situation.
- chord progression — movement from chord to chord
- christmas present — a present given at Christmas time, typically on Christmas Day
- christmas pudding — Christmas pudding is a special pudding that is eaten at Christmas.
- chukchi peninsula — a peninsula in the extreme NE of Russia, in NE Siberia: mainly tundra
- civil partnership — A civil partnership is a legal relationship between two people of the same sex that is similar to marriage.
- clipperton island — an uninhabited atoll in the E Pacific SW of Mexico, under French administration. Area: 6 sq km (2.3 sq miles)
- close corporation — a small private limited company
- close parenthesis — right parenthesis
- close punctuation — punctuation in which many commas, full stops, etc, are used
- closed-captioning — (of a television program, film, or video) distributed with synchronized transcription of speech and written descriptions of other relevant audio elements, as for the hearing-impaired, that are visible only when the option to display them is selected. Abbreviation: CC.
- club subscription — an amount of money that someone pays regularly in order to belong to a club
- clumber (spaniel) — a short-legged spaniel with a heavy body and a thick coat of straight, white hair marked with yellow or orange
- collodion process — wet plate process.
- colour separation — the division of a coloured original into cyan, magenta, yellow, and black so that plates may be made for print reproduction. Separation may be achieved by electronic scanning or by photographic techniques using filters to isolate each colour
- colour supplement — A colour supplement is a colour magazine which is one of the sections of a newspaper, especially at weekends.
- come to handgrips — to engage in hand-to-hand fighting
- companionableness — The state or quality of being companionable.