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19-letter words containing s, e, n, c

  • at one's discretion — as one wishes
  • at sb's convenience — If something is arranged to happen at your convenience, it happens at a time which is most suitable for you.
  • atmospheric braking — a technique of reentry in which the vehicle is maneuvered in the upper atmosphere so as to lose velocity by utilizing drag without overheating.
  • attachment disorder — an emotional and behavioral disorder arising from a failure to form a strong bond with one’s primary caregiver in early childhood and affecting one’s social relationships in later childhood and adulthood. See also attachment (def 3a).
  • attendance register — an official list of people who are present at an institution such as a school
  • attractive nuisance — Law. a doctrine of tort law under which a person who creates or permits to exist on his or her land a dangerous condition attractive to children, as an unfenced swimming pool, is liable for their resulting injuries, even though the injured are trespassers.
  • augsburg confession — the statement of beliefs and doctrines of the Lutherans, formulated by Melanchthon and endorsed by the Lutheran princes, which was presented at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 and which became the chief creed of the Lutheran Church.
  • axiomatic semantics — (theory)   A set of assertions about properties of a system and how they are effected by program execution. The axiomatic semantics of a program could include pre- and post-conditions for operations. In particular if you view the program as a state transformer (or collection of state transformers), the axiomatic semantics is a set of invariants on the state which the state transformer satisfies. E.g. for a function with the type: sort_list :: [T] -> [T] we might give the precondition that the argument of the function is a list, and a postcondition that the return value is a list that is sorted. One interesting use of axiomatic semantics is to have a language that has a finitely computable sublanguage that is used for specifying pre and post conditions, and then have the compiler prove that the program will satisfy those conditions. See also operational semantics, denotational semantics.
  • bachelor of science — A Bachelor of Science is a first degree in a science subject. In British English, it can also mean a person with that degree. The abbreviation BSc or , BSc is also used.
  • bacillary dysentery — shigellosis.
  • balance of payments — A country's balance of payments is the difference, over a period of time, between the payments it makes to other countries for imports and the payments it receives from other countries for exports.
  • bang for one's buck — value for money
  • banker's acceptance — a draft or bill of exchange drawn on a bank and accepted by it
  • batterie de cuisine — cooking utensils collectively; pots and pans, etc
  • be burnt to a crisp — If something is burnt to a crisp, it is completely burnt.
  • be up to one's neck — the part of the body of an animal or human being that connects the head and the trunk.
  • behavioral genetics — an interdisciplinary field studying the effects of genetics and hereditary factors on animal and human behavior.
  • behavioural science — the application of scientific methods to the study of the behaviour of organisms
  • behind closed doors — If people have talks and discussions behind closed doors, they have them in private because they want them to be kept secret.
  • belgian east africa — a former Belgian trust territory in Africa, also (1924–62) Ruanda-Urundi, now the independent countries of Rwanda and Burundi.
  • bend over backwards — to make a special effort, esp in order to please
  • benedict's solution — a chemical solution used to detect the presence of glucose and other reducing sugars. Medically, it is used to test the urine of diabetics
  • bernstein condition — (parallel)   Processes cannot execute in parallel if one effects values used by the other. Nor can they execute in parallel if any subsequent process uses data effected by both, i.e. whose value might depend on the order of execution.
  • bicarbonate of soda — Bicarbonate of soda is a white powder which is used in baking to make cakes rise, and also as a medicine for your stomach.
  • blot one's copybook — to spoil one's reputation by making a mistake, offending against social customs, etc
  • blue screen of life — (operating system)   (BSOL, by analogy with "Blue Screen of Death") The opening screen of Microsoft Windows NT. This screen shows the file system loading, and any problems such as conversions from FAT to NTFS or a scan of a hard drive. The Blue Screen of Life occurs in one way, as opposed to the Blue Screen of Death, which can occur in many different ways and times.
  • blue-ringed octopus — a highly venomous octopus, Octopus maculosus, of E Australia which exhibits blue bands on its tentacles when disturbed
  • bordering countries — countries that share a border with a particular country
  • bracket abstraction — (compiler)   An algorithm which turns a term into a function of some variable. The result of using bracket abstraction on T with respect to variable v, written as [v]T, is a term containing no occurrences of v and denoting a function f such that f v = T. This defines the function f = (\ v . T). Using bracket abstraction and currying we can define a language without bound variables in which the only operation is monadic function application. See combinator.
  • brightline spectrum — the spectrum of an incandescent substance appearing on a spectrogram as one or more bright lines against a dark background.
  • bug tracking system — (programming)   (BTS) A system for receiving and filing bugs reported against a software project, and tracking those bugs until they are fixed. Most major software projects have their own BTS, the source code of which is often available for use by other projects. Well known BTSs include GNATS, Bugzilla, and Debbugs.
  • buildings insurance — insurance which covers buildings
  • business accounting — the keeping of detailed accounts relating to a business or businesses
  • buster brown collar — a medium-sized, starched collar with rounded edges, lying flat on the shoulders, worn by women and girls.
  • california job case — a job case having sufficient spaces to contain both uppercase and lowercase letters and 37 additional characters of foundry type. Compare case2 (def 8).
  • california sea lion — any of several large eared seals, as Eumetopias jubatus (Steller's sea lion) of the northern Pacific, and Zalophus californicus (California sea lion) of the Pacific coast of North America.
  • cannot help oneself — to be the victim of circumstances, a habit, etc.
  • canterbury pilgrims — the pilgrims whose stories are told in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
  • cape york peninsula — large peninsula in NE Australia, part of Queensland, between the Gulf of Carpentaria & the Coral Sea
  • cape-disappointmentCape, a cape in SW Washington state, projecting into the Pacific Ocean on the N of the mouth of the Columbia River.
  • captains courageous — a novel (1897) by Rudyard Kipling.
  • carbon dioxide snow — solid carbon dioxide, used as a refrigerant
  • carbon steel piping — Carbon steel piping is pipes made of steel with carbon as the main alloying component, used for transporting fluids.
  • caroline of ansbach — 1683–1737, wife of George II of Great Britain
  • cash in one's chips — to turn in one's chips for their equivalent in money
  • cash-flow statement — a financial statement that shows a company's cash disbursements and receipts over a given period
  • cast one's lot with — one of a set of objects, as straws or pebbles, drawn or thrown from a container to decide a question or choice by chance.
  • castelnuovo-tedesco — Mario [mah-ryaw] /ˈmɑ ryɔ/ (Show IPA), 1895–1968, U.S. composer, born in Italy.
  • catch sb in the act — If you catch someone in the act, you discover them doing something wrong or committing a crime.
  • catch someone's eye — If something catches your eye, you suddenly notice it.
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