15-letter words containing r, l, a
- counterproposal — a proposal offered as an alternative to a previous proposal
- countervailable — able to counteract or offset as equivalent
- couples therapy — a counseling procedure that attempts to improve the adaptation and adjustment of two people who form a conjugal unit.
- court of appeal — A Court of Appeal is a court which deals with appeals against legal judgments.
- court of claims — (in the US) a court that hears claims against the federal government
- covaledictorian — A graduating student who shares the position of valedictorian with another student.
- cover all bases — take full precautions
- cowper's glands — two small yellowish glands near the prostate that secrete a mucous substance into the urethra during sexual stimulation in males
- crackback block — a block in which a player, usually a wide receiver, angles back sharply towards the middle of the field and blocks a defensive player from the side
- cracked gas oil — Cracked gas oil is a gas oil which is formed as one of the products of a gas reaction.
- cradle snatcher — someone who marries or has an affair with a much younger person
- cradle-to-grave — extending throughout one's life, from birth to death: a cradle-to-grave system of health care.
- cranberry glass — reddish-pink transparent glassware first made in England and the U.S. in the mid-19th century.
- crawler tractor — a tractor with a continuous roller belt over cogged wheels on each side, for moving over rough or muddy ground
- crawling horror — (jargon) Ancient crufty hardware or software that is kept obstinately alive by forces beyond the control of the hackers at a site. Like dusty deck or gonkulator, but connotes that the thing described is not just an irritation but an active menace to health and sanity. "Mostly we code new stuff in C, but they pay us to maintain one big Fortran II application from nineteen-sixty-X that's a real crawling horror." Compare WOMBAT.
- credibility gap — A credibility gap is the difference between what a person says or promises and what they actually think or do.
- crepuscular ray — a twilight ray of sunlight shining through breaks in high clouds and illuminating dust particles in the air.
- crestfallenness — the state of being crestfallen
- cricopharyngeal — of, relating to, or involving the cricoid cartilage and the pharynx.
- criminal damage — intentionally damaging property that belongs to someone else, including public property
- criminal lawyer — a lawyer who deals with criminal rather than civil cases
- criminal record — a list of a person's criminal convictions
- criminalisation — (chiefly, British) Alternative form of criminalization.
- criminalization — to make punishable as a crime: To reduce the graffiti on subway cars, he wants to criminalize the selling of spray paint to minors.
- crimson rosella — an Australian parrot, Platycercus elegans, often kept as a cage bird
- critical period — a period in a lifetime during which a specific stage of development usually occurs. If it fails to do so, it cannot readily occur afterwards
- critical region — that part of a statistical distribution in which the probability of a given hypothesis is less than the chosen significance level, so that the hypothesis would be rejected
- critical volume — the volume occupied by one mole or unit mass of a substance in its critical state
- crocodile tears — If someone is crying crocodile tears, their tears and sadness are not genuine or sincere.
- cross assembler — an assembler that runs on a computer other than the one for which it assembles programs
- cross of valour — the highest Canadian award for bravery
- cross tolerance — the resistance to one or more effects of a substance because of tolerance to a pharmacologically similar substance: a cross-tolerance of some alcoholics to anesthetics.
- cross-assembler — An assembler which runs on one type of processor and produces machine code for another. There is a set of 6502, 68xx and Zilog Z80 and 8085 cross-assemblers in C by <[email protected]> and Alan R. Baldwin. They run under MS-DOS and could be compiled to run under Unix and on the Amiga and Atari ST. See also fas.
- cross-pollinate — to subject or be subjected to cross-pollination
- cross-tolerance — the resistance to one or more effects of a substance because of tolerance to a pharmacologically similar substance: a cross-tolerance of some alcoholics to anesthetics.
- crossfunctional — Spanning several functions.
- crossing patrol — a person who holds up the traffic so that school children can cross the road safely
- crossover value — the percentage of offspring showing recombination among the total offspring of a given cross. It indicates the amount of crossing over that has occurred and therefore the relative positions of the genes on the chromosomes
- crunchy granola — crisp; brittle.
- crunchy-granola — characterized by or defining oneself by ecological awareness, liberal political views, and support or use of natural products and health foods.
- crustaceologist — One who studies crustaceology.
- cryptographical — the science or study of the techniques of secret writing, especially code and cipher systems, methods, and the like. Compare cryptanalysis (def 2).
- crystal counter — an instrument for detecting and measuring the intensity of high-energy radiation, in which particles collide with a crystal and momentarily increase its conductivity
- crystal healing — (in alternative therapy) the use of the supposed power of crystals to affect the human energy field
- crystal lattice — the regular array of points about which the atoms, ions, or molecules composing a crystal are centred
- crystal nucleus — the tiny crystal that forms at the onset of crystallization
- crystal pick-up — a record-player pick-up in which the current is generated by the deformation of a piezoelectric crystal caused by the movements of the stylus
- crystalliferous — producing or containing crystals
- crystallisation — (British) alternative spelling of crystallization.
- crystallization — Crystallization is the process in which crystals are formed either from something that has been melted or from a solution.