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21-letter words containing s, e, n, a

  • bulletin board system — (communications, application)   (BBS, bboard /bee'bord/, message board, forum; plural: BBSes) A computer and associated software which typically provides an electronic message database where people can log in and leave messages. Messages are typically split into topic groups similar to the newsgroups on Usenet (which is like a distributed BBS). Any user may submit or read any message in these public areas. The term comes from physical pieces of board on which people can pin messages written on paper for general consumption - a "physical bulletin board". Ward Christensen, the programmer and operator of the first BBS (on-line 1978-02-16) called it a CBBS for "computer bulletin board system". Since the rise of the World-Wide Web, the term has become antiquated, though the concept is more popular than ever, with many websites featuring discussion areas where users can post messages for public consumption. Apart from public message areas, some BBSes provided archives of files, personal electronic mail and other services of interest to the system operator (sysop). Thousands of BBSes around the world were run from amateurs' homes on MS-DOS boxes with a single modem line each. Although BBSes were traditionally the domain of hobbyists, many connected directly to the Internet (accessed via telnet), others were operated by government, educational, and research institutions. Fans of Usenet or the big commercial time-sharing bboards such as CompuServe, CIX and GEnie tended to consider local BBSes the low-rent district of the hacker culture, but they helped connect hackers and users in the personal-micro and let them exchange code. Use of this term for a Usenet newsgroup generally marks one either as a newbie fresh in from the BBS world or as a real old-timer predating Usenet.
  • bursting at the seams — If a place is very full, you can say that it is bursting at the seams.
  • businessman's holiday — busman's holiday.
  • by fair means or foul — If someone tries to achieve something by fair means or foul, they use every means possible in order to achieve it, and they do not care if their behaviour is dishonest or unfair.
  • by no manner of means — definitely not
  • canticle of canticles — another name for the Song of Solomon, used in the Douay Bible
  • caroline of brunswick — 1768–1821, wife of George IV of the United Kingdom: tried for adultery (1820)
  • cartesian coordinates — a system of representing points in space in terms of their distance from a given origin measured along a set of mutually perpendicular axes. Written (x,y,z) with reference to three axes
  • cascading style sheet — a file recording style details, such as fonts, colours, etc, that is read by browsers so that style is consistent over multiple web pages
  • castellon de la plana — a port in E Spain. Pop: 160 714 (2003 est)
  • category merchandiser — A category merchandiser is a person whose job is to maintain stocks, manage displays and promote sales of a certain product category such as footwear.
  • cause-effect graphing — (programming)   A testing technique that aids in selecting, in a systematic way, a high-yield set of test cases that logically relates causes to effects to produce test cases. It has a beneficial side effect in pointing out incompleteness and ambiguities in specifications.
  • central standard time — one of the standard times used in North America, based on the local time of the 90° meridian, six hours behind Greenwich Mean Time
  • charity commissioners — (in Britain) members of a commission constituted to keep a register of charities and control charitable trusts
  • cheese and wine party — a party at which cheese and wine are served
  • 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.
  • chief master sergeant — a solider of the highest enlisted rank in the US Air Force
  • chinese lantern plant — winter cherry (def 1).
  • chinese water torture — a form of torture in which water is made to drip for a long period of time onto a victim's forehead to drive him insane
  • chinese-lantern plant — a perennial ground-cherry (Physalis alkekengi) grown for winter bouquets because of the bladderlike red calyx that surrounds its small, tomatolike fruit
  • chink in one's armour — a small but fatal weakness
  • christmas decorations — decorations of different kinds appropriate to Christmas, such as tinsel, candles, images of angels, etc.
  • 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.
  • clean someone's clock — an instrument for measuring and recording time, especially by mechanical means, usually with hands or changing numbers to indicate the hour and minute: not designed to be worn or carried about.
  • closed-angle glaucoma — angle-closure glaucoma. See under glaucoma.
  • 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.
  • comfortably-furnished — containing comfortable furniture
  • 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
  • committing magistrate — a magistrate who decides if there is enough evidence for a case to proceed
  • communication science — the study of ways in which human beings communicate, including speech, gesture, telecommunication systems, publishing and broadcasting media, etc
  • communications server — (operating system)   IBM's rebranding of ACF.
  • comparative statement — a financial statement with figures arranged in two or more parallel columns, each column representing a fiscal year or other period, used to compare performance between periods.
  • comparison microscope — a microscope having two objective lenses and using a system of prisms to form in one eyepiece adjacent images of two different objects.
  • compensation neurosis — an unconscious attempt to retain physical or psychological symptoms of illness when some advantage may be obtained (distinguished from malingering).
  • 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.
  • componential analysis — the analysis of a set of related linguistic items, especially word meanings, into combinations of features in terms of which each item may be compared with every other, as in the analysis of man into the semantic features “male,” “mature,” and “human,” woman into “female,” “mature,” and “human,” girl into “female,” “immature,” and “human,” and bull into “male,” “mature,” and “bovine.”.
  • computer aided design — (application)   (CAD) The part of CAE concerning the drawing or physical layout steps of engineering design. Often found in the phrase "CAD/CAM" for ".. manufacturing".
  • computer-aided design — the use of computer techniques in designing products, esp involving the use of computer graphics
  • 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.
  • cone penetration test — a method of testing soils by pressing a cone of standard dimensions into the soil under a known load and measuring the penetration
  • conference facilities — Conference facilities are large rooms and pieces of equipment that a hotel provides so an organization can have conference there.
  • confidence and supply — denoting an arrangement in a hung parliament in which an opposition party agrees not to vote against a minority government in votes of confidence or budgetary matters but reserves the right to oppose other legislation
  • confirm a reservation — If you confirm a reservation, you inform someone who has booked a room at a hotel that the reservation is definite.
  • consciousness raising — Consciousness raising is the process of developing awareness of an unfair situation, with the aim of making people want to help in changing it.
  • consciousness-raising — Psychology. a group-therapy technique in which the aim is to enhance the participants' awareness of their particular needs and goals as individuals or as a group.
  • conspiracy of silence — If there is a conspiracy of silence about something, people who know about it have agreed that they will not talk publicly about it, although it would probably be a good thing if people in general knew about it.
  • constant mesh gearbox — A constant mesh gearbox is a type of transmission in which all forward gear pairs remain engaged.
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