19-letter words containing o, n, c, a
- music to one's ears — something that is very pleasant to hear
- mutual fund company — a company that sells and manages mutual funds
- nagling coalescence — (networking, algorithm) An algorithm for improving TCP/IP network performance by combining small packets ("tinygrams") into larger ones, thus reducing the per-packet overhead. The server transmits the packet either when it has reached a preset size or when it receives an acknowledgment of the previous packet.
- narcotics anonymous — an organization that helps drug users recover from drug addiction
- nasty piece of work — malicious person
- national assistance — (in Britain) formerly a weekly allowance paid to certain people by the state to bring their incomes up to minimum levels established by law
- national characters — (character) Characters with accents and other diacritical marks that are used in certain written languages (that are based on the Roman alphabet) but not in others, particularly not in English. A standard list is ISO Latin 1.
- national coal board — a statutory corporation set up to run Britain's nationalised coal mining industry between 1947 and 1994, at which time the industry was privatized
- national convention — French History. the legislature of France 1792–95.
- national curriculum — The National Curriculum is the course of study that most school pupils in England and Wales are meant to follow between the ages of 5 and 16.
- national serviceman — a soldier undertaking compulsory military service
- natural catastrophe — A natural catastrophe is an unexpected event, caused by nature, such as an earthquake or flood, in which there is a lot of suffering, damage, or death.
- necessary condition — prerequisite
- negative income tax — a system of income subsidy through which persons having less than a certain annual income receive money from the government rather than pay taxes to it.
- neighbourhood watch — a scheme under which members of a community agree together to take responsibility for keeping an eye on each other's property, as a way of preventing crime
- nerve growth factor — a protein that promotes the growth, organization, and maintenance of sympathetic and some sensory nerve cells. Abbreviation: NGF.
- neuropathologically — In a neuropathologic way.
- neuropsychodynamics — The theoretical synthesis of neuroscience and psychodynamics.
- new general catalog — a catalog of star clusters, galaxies, and other non-stellar objects, published in 1888
- newcastle upon tyne — 1st Duke of, Pelham-Holles, Thomas.
- newtonian mechanics — the branch of mechanics that is based on Newton's laws of motion and that is applicable to systems that are so large that Planck's constant can be regarded as negligibly small (distinguished from quantum mechanics).
- newtonian telescope — a reflecting telescope in which a mirror or reflecting prism is mounted on the axis near the eyepiece so that the image may be viewed from outside the telescope tube at right angles to the axis.
- niccolo machiavelli — Niccolò di Bernardo [neek-kaw-law dee ber-nahr-daw] /ˌnik kɔˈlɔ di bɛrˈnɑr dɔ/ (Show IPA), 1469–1527, Italian statesman, political philosopher, and author.
- nicolaus copernicus — Nicolaus [nik-uh-ley-uh s] /ˌnɪk əˈleɪ əs/ (Show IPA), (Mikolaj Kopernik) 1473–1543, Polish astronomer who promulgated the now accepted theory that the earth and the other planets move around the sun (the Copernican System)
- no strings attached — without conditions
- no-write allocation — (memory management) A cache policy where only processor reads are cached, thus avoiding the need for write-back or write-through.
- non causa pro causa — the fallacy of giving as a reason for a conclusion a proposition not actually relevant to that conclusion.
- non-confidentiality — spoken, written, acted on, etc., in strict privacy or secrecy; secret: a confidential remark.
- non-confrontational — tending toward or ready for confrontation: They came to the meeting with a confrontational attitude.
- non-contemporaneous — living or occurring during the same period of time; contemporary.
- nonmaterial culture — the aggregate of values, mores, norms, etc., of a society; the ideational structure of a culture that provides the values and meanings by which it functions.
- nonplayer character — a character in a tabletop role-playing game who is controlled by the Game Master.
- north pacific ocean — the northern part of the Pacific Ocean, extending from the equator to the Arctic Ocean.
- north-central state — a state of N Nigeria. Capital: Kaduna. Pop: 4 438 007 (1995 est). Area: 46 053 sq km (17 781 sq miles)
- northwest ordinance — the act of Congress in 1787 providing for the government of the Northwest Territory and setting forth the steps by which its subdivisions might become states.
- not by a long chalk — by no means; not possibly
- not care/give a fig — If you say that someone doesn't care a fig or doesn't give a fig about something, you are emphasizing that they think it is unimportant or that they are not interested in it.
- not much to look at — unattractive or unimpressive
- not worth a cracker — worthless; useless
- not worth a crumpet — utterly worthless
- noughts and crosses — tick-tack-toe (def 1).
- noughts-and-crosses — tick-tack-toe (def 1).
- nuclear power plant — factory that generates atomic energy
- obsolescence clause — a clause in an insurance policy that takes account of the obsolescence of the item insured in order to lower the amount to be paid out in the event of a claim
- occupation grouping — a category in a system of classifying people according to occupation, based originally on information obtained by government census and subsequently developed by market research. The classifications are used by the advertising industry to identify potential markets. The groups are A, B, C1, C2, D, and E
- occupational hazard — a danger or hazard to workers that is inherent in a particular occupation: Silicosis is an occupational hazard of miners.
- occupational health — Occupational health is the branch of medicine that deals with the health of people in their workplace or in relation to their job.
- oceanus procellarum — (Ocean of Storms) the largest dark plain on the face of the moon, in the second and third quadrants: about 2 million square miles (5.2 million sq. km).
- of one's own accord — to be in agreement or harmony; agree.
- old church slavonic — the oldest attested Slavic language, an ecclesiastical language written first by Cyril and Methodius in a Bible translation of the 9th century and continued in use for about two centuries. It represents the South Slavic, Bulgarian dialect of 9th-century Salonika with considerable addition of other South and West Slavic elements. Abbreviation: OCS.