14-letter words containing o, u, t, c
- audio-cassette — a cassette of tape on which sound only is recorded
- audiocassettes — Plural form of audiocassette.
- auditory canal — the narrow passageway from the outer ear to the eardrum.
- auger-electron — a nonradiative process in which an atom in an excited state undergoes a transition to a lower state by the emission of a bound electron (Auger electron) rather than by the emission of an x-ray.
- austro-asiatic — a hypothetical phylum or superfamily of languages consisting of Mon-Khmer and certain other languages of India and South-East Asia. Links with Malayo-Polynesian have also been suggested
- authentication — to establish as genuine.
- author catalog — a catalog whose entries are listed by author, editor, compiler, translator, or other party considered to have responsibility for the creation or assembly of the work specified.
- autoactivation — (biochemistry) autocatalysis.
- autobiographic — marked by or dealing with one's own experiences or life history; of or in the manner of an autobiography: autobiographical material; an autobiographical novel.
- autocollimator — an instrument combining the functions of a telescope and collimator, for detecting and measuring very small deviations in a beam of light.
- autoconfiscate — (software, jargon) A term coined by Noah Friedman meaning to set up or modify a source-code distribution so that it configures and builds using the GNU project's autoconf/automake/libtools suite.
- autocoprophagy — the consumption of one's own faeces
- autocorrelator — (electronics) A device that modifies a signal with a delayed copy of itself in order to detect any periodic signal hidden in the noise.
- autocovariance — (statistics) The covariance of a signal with another part of the same signal.
- autocratically — In an autocratic manner.
- autodesk, inc. — (company) The distributors of the AutoCAD CAD package. Address: Sausalito, CA, USA.
- autodestructed — Simple past tense and past participle of autodestruct.
- automatic door — a self-opening door
- autopilot code — (jargon, humour) Code that was written by a programmer on "auto-pilot" who wasn't really thinking about what they were doing.
- autoreactivity — (immunology) The condition of being autoreactive.
- back catalogue — A musical performer's back catalogue is the music which they recorded and released in the past rather than their latest recordings.
- back to nature — If you want to get back to nature, you want to return to a simpler way of living.
- bamboo curtain — (esp in the 1950s and 1960s) the political and military barrier to communications around the People's Republic of China
- barbour jacket — a hard-wearing waterproof waxed jacket
- base community — (especially in South America) a group of people taking part in religious devotions and Bible study, who seek to apply this in their socioeconomic and political situation.
- basque country — Theregion comprising three provinces in N Spain, on the Bay of Biscay, inhabited by Basques: 2,803 sq mi (7,260 sq km); pop. 2,104,000
- basso continuo — continuo.
- be cut to size — If an object is cut to size, its size is altered to make it suitable for a particular purpose.
- be out of luck — If you say that someone is out of luck, you mean that they cannot have something which they can normally have.
- beaufort scale — an international scale of wind velocities ranging for practical purposes from 0 (calm) to 12 (hurricane force). In the US an extension of the scale, from 13 to 17 for winds over 64 knots, is used
- beautification — Making beautiful, beautifying, improving the appearance of something.
- beauty contest — A beauty contest is a competition in which young women are judged to decide which one is the most beautiful.
- beta reduction — [lambda-calculus] The application of a lambda abstraction to an argument expression. A copy of the body of the lambda abstraction is made and occurrences of the bound variable being replaced by the argument. E.g. (\ x . x+1) 4 --> 4+1 Beta reduction is the only kind of reduction in the pure lambda-calculus. The opposite of beta reduction is beta abstraction. These are the two kinds of beta conversion. See also name capture.
- bilious attack — a group of symptoms consisting of headache, abdominal pain, and constipation
- binary counter — (electronics, hardware) A digital circuit which has a clock input and a number of count outputs which give the number of clock cycles. The output may change either on rising or falling clock edges. The circuit may also have a reset input which sets all outputs to zero when asserted. The counter may be either a synchronous counter or a ripple counter.
- bioaeronautics — the use of aircraft in the discovery, development, and protection of natural and biological resources
- biolinguistics — the study of language functions as they relate to or derive from the biological characteristics of an organism.
- bioluminescent — the production of light by living organisms.
- block faulting — the process by which tensional forces in the earth's crust cause large bodies of rock to founder.
- block mountain — a mountain produced by faulting and the uplifting of large blocks of rock
- bone structure — the skeletal composition of a human or animal
- boston lettuce — a type of butterhead lettuce
- bread poultice — a poultice made from breadcrumbs
- broad-spectrum — effective against a wide variety of diseases or microorganisms
- bronchial tube — Your bronchial tubes are the two tubes which connect your windpipe to your lungs.
- brushed cotton — cotton fabric that is brushed to remove excess lint and fibres to leave a soft, smooth finish
- buckwheat coal — anthracite coal in sizes ranging from 5/16 to 9/16 inch (7.9 to 13.9 m).
- buckwheat note — shape note.
- budget account — an account with a department store, etc, enabling a customer to make monthly payments to cover his or her past and future purchases
- bug-compatible — Said of a design or revision that has been badly compromised by a requirement to be compatible with fossils or misfeatures in other programs or (especially) previous releases of itself. "MS-DOS 2.0 used \ as a path separator to be bug-compatible with some cretin's choice of / as an option character in 1.0."