21-letter words containing r, c, o, l
- bonnie prince charlie — a member of the royal family that ruled in Scotland from 1371 to 1714 and in England from 1603 to 1714.
- bottlebrush moustache — a short, bristly moustache
- breath-of-life packet — (XEROX PARC) An Ethernet packet that contains bootstrap code, periodically sent out from a working computer to infuse the "breath of life" into any computer on the network that has crashed. Computers depending on such packets have sufficient hardware or firmware code to wait for (or request) such a packet during the reboot process. See also dickless workstation. The notional "kiss-of-death packet", with a function complementary to that of a breath-of-life packet, is recommended for dealing with hosts that consume too many network resources. Though "kiss-of-death packet" is usually used in jest, there is at least one documented instance of an Internet subnet with limited address-table slots in a gateway computer in which such packets were routinely used to compete for slots, rather like Christmas shoppers competing for scarce parking spaces.
- buffalo carpet beetle — any of several small beetles of the family Dermestidae, the larvae of which are household pests, feeding on rugs and other woolen fabrics, especially Anthrenus scrophulariae (buffalo carpet beetle) and Attagenus piceus (black carpet beetle)
- butterfly common lisp — A parallel version of Common LISP for the BBN Butterfly computer.
- cantilever foundation — a building foundation supporting its load partly or wholly upon cantilevers.
- carlos saavedra lamas — Carlos [kahr-laws] /ˈkɑr lɔs/ (Show IPA), 1878?–1959, Argentine statesman and diplomat: Nobel Peace Prize 1936.
- caroline of brunswick — 1768–1821, wife of George IV of the United Kingdom: tried for adultery (1820)
- casing collar locator — A casing collar locator is a tool that is placed down the borehole to allow depths to be measured by detecting the position of the casing collar.
- catalyst-to-oil ratio — The catalyst-to-oil ratio is the amount of a catalyst relative to the amount of oil, which with temperature affects the yield of a process.
- caviar to the general — a thing appealing only to a highly cultivated taste: Hamlet II, ii
- central european time — the standard time adopted by Western European countries one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, corresponding to British Summer Time
- 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.
- 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
- 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
- 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.
- chloroformyl chloride — phosgene.
- circle of convergence — Mathematics. a circle associated with a given power series such that the series converges for all values of the variable inside the circle and diverges for all values outside it.
- 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
- civil rights movement — campaign for human freedoms
- 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
- clerk to the justices — (in England) a legally qualified person who sits in court with lay justices to advise them on points of law
- clostridium difficile — Clostridium difficile is a bacterium that causes severe diarrhoea. It is commonly found in hospitals. C.diff is also used.
- 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.
- come in from the cold — to come out of exile, isolation, etc.; resume an active role
- 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
- comparative philology — comparative linguistics.
- 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.
- concurrent resolution — a resolution passed by one branch of a legislature and concurred in by the other, indicating the opinion of the legislature but not having the force of law
- 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.
- conference facilities — Conference facilities are large rooms and pieces of equipment that a hotel provides so an organization can have conference there.
- confused flour beetle — a brown flour beetle, Tribolium confusum, that feeds on stored grain and grain products.
- congregational church — any evangelical Protestant Christian Church that is governed according to the principles of Congregationalism. In 1972 the majority of churches in the Congregational Church in England and Wales voted to become part of the United Reformed Church