16-letter words containing s, e, r, i, c
- crime of passion — a crime, often a murder, committed from passion, esp sexual passion
- crime passionnel — a crime committed from passion, esp sexual passion
- criminal justice — the system of law enforcement, involving police, lawyers, courts, and corrections, used for all stages of criminal proceedings and punishment.
- critical density — the density of matter that would be required to halt the expansion of the universe
- critical section — A non-re-entrant piece of code that can only be executed by one process at a time. It will usually terminate in bounded time and a process will only have to wait a bounded time to enter it. Some synchronisation mechanism is required at the entry and exit of the critical section to ensure exclusive use.
- cross one's mind — to occur to one briefly or suddenly
- cross protection — the protection against a viral infection given to a plant by its prior inoculation with a related but milder virus
- cross-cut chisel — a chisel used for making grooves
- cross-resistance — immunologic resistance to the pathogenic effects of a microorganism because of previous exposure to another species or type having cross-reactive antigens.
- crosscontaminate — Alternative spelling of cross-contaminate.
- crossopterygians — Plural form of crossopterygian.
- crossover bodice — a bodice which has one side crossing over the other
- cryoprecipitates — Plural form of cryoprecipitate.
- cryopreservation — the storage of blood or living tissues at extremely cold temperatures, often -196 degrees Celsius.
- crystalline lens — a biconvex transparent elastic structure in the eye situated behind the iris, serving to focus images on the retina
- curlew sandpiper — a common Eurasian sandpiper, Calidris ferruginea, having a brick-red breeding plumage and a greyish winter plumage
- curmudgeonliness — The state or condition of being curmudgeonly.
- currier and ives — any of a 19th-cent. series of prints showing the manners, people, and events of the times
- customer profile — a description or analysis of a typical or ideal customer for one's business
- customer service — Customer service refers to the way that companies behave towards their customers, for example how well they treat them.
- cycle of erosion — the hypothetical sequence of modifications to the earth's surface by erosion, from the original uplift of the land to the ultimate low plain, usually divided into the youthful, mature, and old stages
- dark-side hacker — (jargon, legal) A criminal or malicious hacker; a cracker. From George Lucas's Darth Vader, "seduced by the dark side of the Force". The implication that hackers form a sort of elite of technological Jedi Knights is intended. Opposite: samurai.
- darwin's finches — the finches of the subfamily Geospizinae of the Galapagos Islands, showing great variation in bill structure and feeding habits: provided Darwin with evidence to support his theory of evolution
- data compression — the act of compressing.
- davidson current — a winter countercurrent that flows N along the W coast of the U.S.
- deboursification — (jargon) Removal of irrelevant newsgroups from the Newsgroups header of a followup. The term applies particularly to the removal of frivolous groups added by one of the Kooks. See also: sneck.
- decentralisation — Alternative spelling of decentralization.
- dechristianizing — Present participle of dechristianize.
- decision problem — (theory) A problem with a yes/no answer. Determining whether some potential solution to a question is actually a solution or not. E.g. "Is 43669" a prime number?". This is in contrast to a "search problem" which must find a solution from scratch, e.g. "What is the millionth prime number?". See decidability.
- decision support — Software used to aid management decision making, typically relying on a decision support database.
- deconstructively — In a deconstructive manner.
- delta conversion — delta reduction
- demoiselle crane — a gray crane, Anthropoides virgo, of northern Africa, Europe, and Asia, having long, white plumes behind each eye.
- dental insurance — Dental insurance is insurance that pays for treatment by a dentist.
- derbyshire chair — a chair of the mid-17th century, made of oak, usually without arms, and having a back of two carved rails between square uprights.
- destructibleness — The quality of being destructible.
- devonshire cream — clotted cream.
- diagonal process — a form of argument in which a new member of a set is constructed from a list of its known members by making the nth term of the new member differ from the nth term of the nth member. The new member is thus different from every member of the list
- diesel-hydraulic — a locomotive driven by a diesel engine through hydraulic transmission and torque converters
- digital research — (company) The company which developed CP/M, the operating system used on many of the first generation 8-bit microprocessor-based personal computers. Digital Research also produced DR-DOS. Address: Santa Cruz, CA, USA.
- direct discourse — quotation of a speaker in which the speaker's exact words are repeated.
- direct-mail shot — the posting of unsolicited sales literature to potential customers' homes or business addresses
- direction cosine — the cosine of the angle made by a given vector and a coordinate axis.
- director's chair — a lightweight folding armchair with transversely crossed legs and having a canvas seat and back panel, as traditionally used by motion-picture directors.
- disaccreditation — to take away the accreditation or authorization of: to disaccredit a diplomat.
- disappearing act — magic trick
- disconcertedness — The characteristic of being disconcerted.
- discourteousness — The state or quality of being discourteous.
- discovered check — a check that is effected by moving an intervening piece from the line of attack of a queen, rook, or bishop.
- discovery method — a largely unstructured, situational method or philosophy of teaching whereby students are permitted to find solutions to problems on their own or at their own pace, often jointly in group activities, either independent of or under the guidance of a teacher.