20-letter words containing s, d
- chapter of accidents — a series of misfortunes
- chief superintendent — an officer of senior rank in a British police force or other similarly organized force
- child support agency — the British government agency concerned with the welfare of children
- child-abuse register — (in Britain) a list of children deemed to be at risk of abuse or injury from their parents or guardians, compiled and held by a local authority, area health authority, or NSPCC Special Unit
- childhood sweetheart — a boyfriend or girlfriend from an early stage of life
- clay-colored sparrow — a sparrow, Spizella pallida, of the interior of North America, having buff, brown, and white plumage with a pale-gray breast.
- cleansing department — the department of a local authority that collects refuse
- codex juris canonici — the official code of canon law in force in the Roman Catholic Church; introduced in 1918 and revised in 1983
- cognitive dissonance — an uncomfortable mental state resulting from conflicting cognitions; usually resolved by changing some of the cognitions
- college of cardinals — the collective body of cardinals having the function of electing and advising the pope
- colloidal suspension — a mixture having particles of one component, with diameters between 10 −7 and 10 −9 metres, suspended in a continuous phase of another component. The mixture has properties between those of a solution and a fine suspension
- colorado blue spruce — blue spruce.
- combination sandwich — a big sandwich with a mixed filling
- come off second best — to be defeated in competition
- commissioned officer — a military officer holding a commission, such as Second Lieutenant in the British Army, Acting Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, Pilot Officer in the Royal Air Force, and officers of all ranks senior to these
- commissioning editor — a person who commissions authors to write books and magazine articles
- common lodging house — a cheap lodging house
- compare and contrast — note similarities, differences
- compensatory damages — sum paid for a loss
- complaints procedure — a prescribed method of lodging a complaint to an institution
- complementary strand — either of the two chains that make up a double helix of DNA, with corresponding positions on the two chains being composed of a pair of complementary bases.
- condensation nucleus — nucleus (def 5).
- conditioned response — a response that is transferred from the second to the first of a pair of stimuli. A well-known Pavlovian example is salivation by a dog when it hears a bell ring, because food has always been presented when the bell has been rung previously
- conditioned stimulus — a stimulus to which an organism has learned to make a response by classical conditioning
- congressional record — (in the US) the government journal that publishes all proceedings of Congress
- conservative judaism — a movement reacting against the radicalism of Reform Judaism, rejecting extreme change and advocating moderate relaxations of traditional Jewish law, by an extension of the process by which its adherents claim traditional Orthodox Judaism evolved
- constant de rebecque — Henri Benjamin [ahn-ree ban-zha-man] /ɑ̃ˈri bɛ̃ ʒaˈmɛ̃/ (Show IPA), (Benjamin Constant) 1767–1830, French statesman and author, born in Switzerland.
- consumer price index — The consumer price index is an official measure of the rate of inflation within a country's economy. The abbreviation CPI is also used.
- contradistinguishing — Present participle of contradistinguish.
- controlled explosion — the deliberate detonation of an explosive device under strictly controlled circumstances
- controlled substance — a drug regulated by the Federal Controlled Substances Acts, including opiates, depressants, stimulants, and hallucinogens
- convective discharge — the repulsion of ions of a gas by a highly charged body, creating a discernible wind.
- copulative asyndeton — a staccato effect produced by omitting copulative connectives between two or more items in a group, as in “Friends, Romans, countrymen.”.
- corresponding angles — a pair of nonadjacent angles, one interior and one exterior, on the same side of a transversal: these paired angles are equal if the lines cut by the transversal are parallel
- cost-of-living index — a numerical scale by means of which cost-of-living levels can be compared with a base number
- counterdemonstration — a demonstration that is held in reaction to another demonstration
- crime and punishment — a novel (1866) by Feodor Dostoevsky.
- criminal proceedings — action taken in a court to bring a criminal prosecution against someone
- criminal syndicalism — the doctrine of recourse to acts of violence or terrorism, or the advocacy of such acts, as a means of effecting economic or political change: proscribed by statute in many U.S. states.
- crisis of confidence — a serious loss of confidence
- cross someone's mind — to come suddenly or briefly to someone's mind
- crossover distortion — distortion that sometimes occurs at a frequency (crossover frequency) at which a crossover network switches signals from one speaker to another.
- crossword dictionary — a dictionary that lists common clues found in crossword puzzles with potential answer words. In books, the lists are usually sorted by the number of letters in the answer, while an online crossword dictionary, such as the Dictionary.com Crossword Solver, is able to analyze queries electronically, examining either the clue or the number and pattern of letters already filled in to arrive at suggested answers.
- cycloidal propulsion — propulsion of a vessel by propellers of controllable pitch that steer as well as propel.
- cylinder head gasket — (in an automobile engine) a gasket placed between the cylinder and the cylinder heads to avoid leaks of coolant and compression
- cytosine arabinoside — cytarabine.
- darkfield microscope — kind of microscope
- database transaction — (database) A set of related changes applied to a database. The term typically implies that either all of the changes should be applied or, in the event of an error, none of them, i.e. the transaction should be atomic. Atomicity is one of the ACID properties a transaction can have, another is isolation - preventing interference between processes trying to access the database cocurrently. This is usually achieved by some form of locking - where one process takes exclusive control of a database table or row for the duration of the transaction, preventing other processes from accessing the locked data. The canonical example of a transaction is transferring money between two bank accounts by subtracting it from one and adding it to the other. Some relational database management systems require the user to explicitly start a transaction and then either commit it (if all the individual steps are successful) or roll it back (if there are any errors).
- daylight saving time — Daylight Saving Time is a period of time in the summer when the clocks are set one hour forward, so that people can have extra light in the evening.
- daylight-saving time — the civil time observed when daylight saving is adopted in a country or community.