20-letter words containing s, e, c, t
- connector conspiracy — (business, standard) The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension, other designers) to come up with products that don't fit with the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive interface devices. The term probably came into prominence with the appearance of the DEC KL-10, none of whose connectors matched anything else. The KL-10 Massbus connector was actually *patented* by DEC, who reputedly refused to licence the design, thus effectively locking out competition for the lucrative Massbus peripherals market. This policy was a source of frustration for the owners of dying, obsolescent disk and tape drives. A related phenomenon is the invention of new screw heads so that only Designated Persons, possessing the magic screwdrivers, can remove covers and make repairs or install options. Older Apple Macintoshes took this one step further, requiring not only a hex wrench but a specialised case-cracking tool to open the box. With the advent of more open-systems computing this term has fallen somewhat into disuse. Compare backward combatability.
- conservation of mass — the principle that the total mass of any isolated system is constant and is independent of any chemical and physical changes taking place within the system
- conservative baptist — a member of a Protestant denomination (Conservative Baptist Association of America) organized in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1948.
- 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.
- constituent assembly — A constituent assembly is a body of representatives that is elected to create or change their country's constitution.
- consumer electronics — computers and other electronic devices designed for private individuals as opposed to businesses
- contact metamorphism — localized metamorphism resulting from the heat of an igneous intrusion.
- contempt of congress — contempt of a U.S. Congressional body, as of an investigating committee, shown by a witness summoned or appearing before it.
- context of situation — the totality of extralinguistic features having relevance to a communicative act.
- continental congress — the assembly of delegates from the North American rebel colonies held during and after the War of American Independence. It issued the Declaration of Independence (1776) and framed the Articles of Confederation (1777)
- continuum hypothesis — the assertion that there is no set whose cardinality is greater than that of the integers and smaller than that of the reals
- 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
- controlling interest — a quantity of shares in a business that is sufficient to ensure control over its direction
- convective discharge — the repulsion of ions of a gas by a highly charged body, creating a discernible wind.
- conventional weapons — weapons which are not nuclear
- conversation stopper — a comment that is so shocking or boring that people stop talking
- copulative asyndeton — a staccato effect produced by omitting copulative connectives between two or more items in a group, as in “Friends, Romans, countrymen.”.
- cost-of-living index — a numerical scale by means of which cost-of-living levels can be compared with a base number
- council of ministers — the EU's most important decision-making body
- count one's chickens — If you say that someone is counting their chickens, you mean that they are assuming that they will be successful or get something, when this is not certain.
- counterdemonstration — a demonstration that is held in reaction to another demonstration
- counterrevolutionist — A counterrevolutionary.
- court of last resort — (in the US) a supreme court
- court of st. james's — the British royal court: so called from St. James's Palace, London, the former scene of royal receptions.
- craft apprenticeship — a period of training for a skilled trade in industry, such as for a plumber or electrician
- craniosacral therapy — a form of therapy for various disorders in which the therapist manipulates the bones of the skull
- cream of tomato soup — a creamy soup made from tomatoes
- crime against nature — Law. sodomy.
- crime and punishment — a novel (1866) by Feodor Dostoevsky.
- cross someone's path — to meet or thwart someone
- crossover distortion — distortion that sometimes occurs at a frequency (crossover frequency) at which a crossover network switches signals from one speaker to another.
- cut of someone's jib — someone's manner, behaviour, style, etc
- cut one's own throat — to be the means of one's own ruin
- 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.
- 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).
- de facto segregation — racial, ethnic, or other segregation resulting from societal differences between groups, as socioeconomic or political disparity, without institutionalized legislation intended to segregate.
- decomposed petri net — (parallel) (DPN) A Petri net that has been split into multiple, interconnected nets. This makes it easier to analyse or run the net. DPNs are the basis of concurrency in ConC.
- definite description — a description that is modified by the definite article or a possessive, such as the woman in white or Rosemary's baby
- dementia pugilistica — chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
- democratic socialism — socialism, or a modified form of socialism, achieved by a gradual transition by and under democratic political processes.
- deontological ethics — the branch of ethics dealing with right action and the nature of duty, without regard to the goodness or value of motives or the desirability of the ends of any act.
- deoxyribonucleotides — Plural form of deoxyribonucleotide.
- depreciation expense — A depreciation expense is the amount deducted from gross profit to allow for a reduction in the value of something because of its age or how much it has been used.
- descriptive geometry — the study of the projection of three-dimensional figures onto a plane surface
- descriptive notation — a method of denoting the squares on the chessboard in which each player names the files from the pieces that stand on them at the opening and numbers the ranks away from himself
- desmopressin acetate — a vasopressin analogue, C 46 H 64 N 14 O 12 S 2 , used in the treatment of diabetes insipidus.
- devil's bit scabious — a similar and related Eurasian marsh plant, Succisa pratensis