18-letter words containing o, s, m, t
- bichromate process — any of several methods of photography in which the light-sensitive medium is alkaline bichromate associated with a colloid such as gum, albumen, or gelatin.
- bioinstrumentation — the use of instruments, as sensors, to detect and measure certain body functions, as of persons in spaceflight, and transmit the data to a point where it is evaluated
- bitwise complement — The bitwise complement of a bit field is a bit field of the same length but with each zero changed to a one and vice versa. This is the same as the ones complement of a binary integer.
- bloggs family, the — An imaginary family consisting of Fred and Mary Bloggs and their children. Used as a standard example in knowledge representation to show the difference between extensional and intensional objects. For example, every occurrence of "Fred Bloggs" is the same unique person, whereas occurrences of "person" may refer to different people. Members of the Bloggs family have been known to pop up in bizarre places such as the DEC Telephone Directory. Compare Mbogo, Dr. Fred.
- boltzmann constant — the ratio of the gas constant to the Avogadro constant, equal to 1.380 650 × 10–23 joule per kelvin
- bomb disposal unit — a unit of the police or armed services specializing in bomb disposal
- bounty-fed farmers — farmers who benefit from subsidies
- briquet's syndrome — somatization disorder.
- british somaliland — a former British protectorate (1884–1960) in E Africa, on the Gulf of Aden: united with Italian Somaliland in 1960 to form Somalia (or the Somali Republic); in 1991 the self-styled republic of Somaliland, covering the same area as the former British Somaliland, declared itself independent and continues to function largely as a separate entity, though without international recognition
- brothers karamazov — a novel (1880) by Dostoevsky.
- burkitt's lymphoma — a cancer characterized by tumors containing lymphoid cells, occurring esp. in children, in the jaw, eyes, and internal organs: it is associated with the Epstein-Barr virus
- cambrian mountains — a mountain range in Wales, extending from Carmarthenshire in the S to Denbighshire in the N. Highest peak: Aran Fawddwy, 891 m (2970 ft)
- captain james cook — Frederick Albert, 1865–1940, U.S. physician and polar explorer.
- castration complex — an unconscious fear of having one's genitals removed, as a punishment for wishing to have sex with a parent
- cat's cry syndrome — a complex of congenital malformations in human infants caused by a chromosomal aberration and in which the infant emits a mewing cry.
- catalonian jasmine — a shrub, Jasminum grandiflorum, of India, having crimson-tinged, fragrant white flowers, grown as an ornamental and for perfume.
- catskill mountains — a mountain range in SE New York State: resort. Highest peak: Slide Mountain, 1261 m (4204 ft)
- caucasus mountains — a mountain range in SW Russia, running along the N borders of Georgia and Azerbaijan, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea: mostly over 2700 m (9000 ft). Highest peak: Mount Elbrus, 5642 m (18 510 ft)
- center of symmetry — a point within a crystal through which any straight line extends to points on opposite surfaces of the crystal at equal distances.
- centum call second — (unit) (CCS) A unit used (in North America) to quantify the total traffic running in a network. 1 CCS is 100 call-seconds. That means 1 CCS could be 2 calls of 50 seconds duration or 20 calls of 5 seconds duration.
- championship point — a point that would decide the winner of a match that would decide the championship
- chinese watermelon — a tropical Asian vine, Benincasa hispida, of the gourd family, having a brown, hairy stem, large, solitary, yellow flowers, and white, melonlike fruit.
- christian democrat — a member or supporter of a Christian Democratic party
- christian reformed — of or relating to a Protestant denomination (Christian Reformed Church) organized in the U.S. in 1857 by groups that had seceded from the Dutch Reformed Church.
- christmas shopping — shopping especially for Christmas presents, but also for Christmas food and drink, and all the other things required over the Christmas period.
- christmas stocking — A Christmas stocking is a long sock which children hang up on Christmas Eve. During the night, parents fill the stocking with small presents.
- chromatic semitone — the pitch difference between one note and its sharpened or flattened equivalent
- circulatory system — the system concerned with the transport of blood and lymph, consisting of the heart, blood vessels, lymph vessels, etc
- citizen journalism — the involvement of non-professionals in reporting news, esp in blogs and other websites
- coffee-table music — unadventurous music
- collision diameter — the distance between the centers of two colliding molecules when at their closest point of approach.
- comb-footed spider — any of numerous spiders constituting the family Theridiidae, having a comblike row of bristles on the tarsi of the hind legs.
- combination square — an adjustable device for carpenters, used as a try square, miter square, level, etc.
- combustion chamber — an enclosed space in which combustion takes place, such as the space above the piston in the cylinder head of an internal-combustion engine or the chambers in a gas turbine or rocket engine in which fuel and oxidant burn
- combustion furnace — a furnace used in the laboratory to carry out elemental analysis of organic compounds
- come home to roost — If bad or wrong things that someone has done in the past have come home to roost, or if their chickens have come home to roost, they are now experiencing the unpleasant effects of these actions.
- come to grips with — If you come to grips with a problem, you consider it seriously, and start taking action to deal with it.
- come to terms with — If you come to terms with something difficult or unpleasant, you learn to accept and deal with it.
- common command set — (storage, standard) (CCS) Additional requirements and features for direct-access SCSI devices. In 1985 when the first SCSI standard was being finalised as an American National Standard, the X3T9.2 Task Group was approached by some manufacturers who wanted changes. Rather than delay the SCSI standard, X3T9.2 formed an ad hoc group to define CCS.
- commonwealth games — an event held every four years in which sportspeople from the countries of the Commonwealth compete
- community hospital — (in the US) a local hospital
- compact video disc — a compact laser disc that plays both pictures and sound
- compassion fatigue — the inability to react sympathetically to a crisis, disaster, etc, because of overexposure to previous crises, disasters, etc
- compensation award — an amount of money awarded as compensation in a court case
- compensation order — (in Britain) the requirement of a court that an offender pay compensation for injury, loss, or damage resulting from an offence, either in preference to or as well as a fine
- compensation point — the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide at which the rate of carbon dioxide uptake by a photosynthesizing plant is exactly balanced by its rate of carbon dioxide release in respiration and photorespiration
- complementarianism — The doctrine that genders in a society should have complementary roles.
- complementary base — either of the nucleotide bases linked by a hydrogen bond on opposite strands of DNA or double-stranded RNA: guanine is the complementary base of cytosine, and adenine is the complementary base of thymine in DNA and of uracil in RNA.
- complexity measure — (algorithm) A quantity describing the complexity of a computation.
- composite function — a function obtained from two given functions, where the range of one function is contained in the domain of the second function, by assigning to an element in the domain of the first function that element in the range of the second function whose inverse image is the image of the element.