21-letter words containing o, a, r
- central limit theorem — any of several theorems stating that the sum of a number of random variables obeying certain conditions will assume a normal distribution as the number of variables becomes large.
- certificate authority — (cryptography, body) (CA or "Trusted Third Party") An entity (typically a company) that issues digital certificates to other entities (organisations or individuals) to allow them to prove their identity to others. A Certificate Authority might be an external company such as VeriSign that offers digital certificate services or they might be an internal organisation such as a corporate MIS department. The Certificate Authority's chief function is to verify the identity of entities and issue digital certificates attesting to that identity. The process uses public key cryptography to create a "network of trust". If I want to prove my identity to you, I ask a CA (who you trust to have verified my identity) to encrypt a hash of my signed key with their private key. Then you can use the CA's public key to decrypt the hash and compare it with a hash you calculate yourself. Hashes are used to decrease the amount of data that needs to be transmitted. The hash function must be cryptographically strong, e.g. MD5.
- certificate of origin — a document stating the name of the country that produced a specified shipment of goods: often required before importation of goods
- 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
- character recognition — Character recognition is a process which allows computers to recognize written or printed characters such as numbers or letters and to change them into a form that the computer can use.
- characteristic vector — a vector for which there exists a scalar such that the value of the vector under a given transformation is equal to the scalar times the vector.
- charge-coupled device — an electronic device, used in imaging and signal processing, in which information is represented as packets of electric charge that are stored in an array of tiny closely spaced capacitors and can be moved from one capacitor to another in a controlled way
- charity commissioners — (in Britain) members of a commission constituted to keep a register of charities and control charitable trusts
- charterhouse of parma — a novel (1839) by Stendhal.
- chequebook journalism — Chequebook journalism is the practice of paying people large sums of money for information about crimes or famous people in order to get material for newspaper articles.
- chief warrant officer — a senior-ranking warrant officer in various armed forces
- chinese water torture — a form of torture in which water is made to drip for a long period of time onto a victim's forehead to drive him insane
- chink in one's armour — a small but fatal weakness
- christmas decorations — decorations of different kinds appropriate to Christmas, such as tinsel, candles, images of angels, etc.
- circle of declination — hour circle.
- 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
- civilian review board — a quasi-judicial board of appointed or elected citizens that investigates complaints against the police.
- class-relation method — (programming) A design technique based on the concepts of object-oriented programming and the Entity-Relationship model from the French company Softeam.
- clayton antitrust act — an act of Congress in 1914 supplementing the Sherman Antitrust Act and establishing the FTC.
- clayton-bulwer treaty — an agreement between the U.S. and Great Britain in 1850 guaranteeing that any canal built to connect the Atlantic and Pacific across Central America would be jointly controlled, open to all nations, and unfortified.
- clement of alexandria — Saint. original name Titus Flavius Clemens. ?150–?215 ad, Greek Christian theologian: head of the catechetical school at Alexandria; teacher of Origen. Feast day: Dec 5
- collective bargaining — When a trade union engages in collective bargaining, it has talks with an employer about its members' pay and working conditions.
- college of propaganda — information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.
- collimator viewfinder — a type of viewfinder in a camera
- collins street farmer — a businessman who invests in farms, land, etc
- column address strobe — (hardware) (CAS) A signal sent from a processor (or memory controller) to a dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) (qv) circuit to indicate that the column address lines are valid.
- 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.
- comfortably-furnished — containing comfortable furniture
- commercial fertilizer — fertilizer manufactured chemically, as distinguished from natural fertilizer, as manure.
- commercial television — television companies which make money by selling advertising
- commercial translator — (language) An English-like pre-COBOL language for business data processing.
- committal proceedings — a preliminary hearing in a magistrates' court to decide if there is a case to answer
- committing magistrate — a magistrate who decides if there is enough evidence for a case to proceed
- common carotid artery — the part of a carotid artery between its origin and its point of division into branches.
- communications server — (operating system) IBM's rebranding of ACF.
- 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 philology — comparative linguistics.
- 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).
- complete metric space — (theory) A metric space in which every sequence that converges in itself has a limit. For example, the space of real numbers is complete by Dedekind's axiom, whereas the space of rational numbers is not - e.g. the sequence a[0]=1; a[n_+1]:=a[n]/2+1/a[n].
- 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.
- 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 architecture — the structure, behaviour, and design of computers
- 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 discharge — If someone who is convicted of an offence is given a conditional discharge by a court, they are not punished unless they later commit a further offence.
- 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.