18-letter words containing p, o, t, s
- 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
- cape breton island — an island off SE Canada, in NE Nova Scotia, separated from the mainland by the Strait of Canso: its easternmost point is Cape Breton. Pop: 132 298 (2006). Area: 10 280 sq km (3970 sq miles)
- capital allowances — the money spent by a company on fixed assets which can be taken off the profits of the company before tax is imposed
- 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
- catastrophe theory — a mathematical theory that classifies surfaces according to their form
- cathode dark space — Crookes dark space.
- centre of pressure — the point in a body at which the resultant pressure acts when the body is immersed in a fluid
- championship point — a point that would decide the winner of a match that would decide the championship
- change one's spots — to reform one's character
- child psychologist — a psychologist who specializes in treating children
- christmas shopping — shopping especially for Christmas presents, but also for Christmas food and drink, and all the other things required over the Christmas period.
- christopher sholes — Christopher Latham [ley-thuh m,, -th uh m] /ˈleɪ θəm,, -ðəm/ (Show IPA), 1819–90, U.S. inventor of the typewriter.
- chronostratigraphy — The branch of geology concerned with establishing the absolute ages of strata.
- claustrophobically — In a claustrophobic way.
- clean up one's act — to start to behave in a responsible manner
- cleopatra's needle — either of two Egyptian obelisks, originally set up at Heliopolis about 1500 bc: one was moved to the Thames Embankment, London, in 1878, the other to Central Park, New York, in 1880
- closed corporation — a corporation the stock of which is owned by a small number of persons and is rarely traded on the open market
- coitus interruptus — the deliberate withdrawal of the penis from the vagina before ejaculation
- color transparency — a positive color image photographically produced on transparent film or glass and viewed by transmitted light, usually by projection.
- comb-footed spider — any of numerous spiders constituting the family Theridiidae, having a comblike row of bristles on the tarsi of the hind legs.
- come to grips with — If you come to grips with a problem, you consider it seriously, and start taking action to deal with it.
- 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.
- composition rubber — manufactured rubber
- composition series — a normal series of subgroups in which no additional subgroups can be inserted.
- compression stroke — The compression stroke is the stroke in an engine in which the air or air/fuel mixture is compressed before ignition.
- compressor station — A compressor station is a facility with several compressors (= devices that increase the pressure of air or natural gas) and other equipment to pump natural gas under pressure over long distances.
- computer scientist — a person with advanced knowledge of computers and how they work
- concentration span — the length of time a person can concentrate on something
- conceptual realism — the doctrine that universals have real and independent existence.
- conceptualisations — Plural form of conceptualisation.
- conceptualizations — Plural form of conceptualization.
- condensation point — a point of which every neighborhood contains an uncountable number of points of a given set.
- connected subgraph — (mathematics) A connected graph consisting of a subset of the nodes and edges of some other graph.
- conservative party — The Conservative Party is the main right-of-centre party in Britain.
- constituency party — a branch of a political party operating within a constituency
- construction paper — Construction paper is a type of stiff, colored paper that children use for drawing and for making things.
- constructive proof — (mathematics) A proof that something exists that provides an example or a method for actually constructing it. For example, for any pair of finite real numbers n < 0 and p > 0, there exists a real number 0 < k < 1 such that f(k) = (1-k)*n + k*p = 0. A constructive proof would proceed by rearranging the above to derive an equation for k: k = 1/(1-n/p) From this and the constraints on n and p, we can show that 0 < k < 1. A few mathematicians actually reject *all* non-constructive arguments as invalid; this means, for instance, that the law of the excluded middle (either P or not-P must hold, whatever P is) has to go; this makes proof by contradiction invalid. See intuitionistic logic. Constructive proofs are popular in theoretical computer science, both because computer scientists are less given to abstraction than mathematicians and because intuitionistic logic turns out to be an appropriate theoretical treatment of the foundations of computer science.
- continuous process — A continuous process is a process in which the product comes out without interruption and not in groups.
- conversation piece — something, esp an unusual object, that provokes conversation
- cordless telephone — a portable battery-powered telephone with a short-range radio link to a fixed base unit