18-letter words containing s, h, e, c
- cathode dark space — Crookes dark space.
- cauliflower cheese — a dish of cauliflower with a cheese sauce, eaten hot
- centralized school — a public school formed from the pupils and teachers of a number of discontinued smaller schools, especially in a rural district.
- chagos archipelago — group of islands in the Indian Ocean 1,180 mi (1,899 km) northeast of Mauritius, comprising the British Indian Ocean Territory: chief island, Diego Garcia
- chamber of horrors — a room, for example in a waxworks, containing objects, images or representations of people or scenes that are believed likely to frighten or horrify visitors
- chambered nautilus — nautilus (def 1).
- change one's spots — to reform one's character
- change the subject — to select a new topic of conversation
- character disorder — a disorder characterized by socially undesirable behavior, as poor control of impulses or inability to maintain close emotional relationships, and by absence of anxiety or guilt.
- character graphics — ASCII art
- characteristically — Also, characteristical. pertaining to, constituting, or indicating the character or peculiar quality of a person or thing; typical; distinctive: Red and gold are the characteristic colors of autumn.
- charge of quarters — a member of the armed forces who handles administration in his or her unit, esp after duty hours
- chartered surveyor — (in Britain) a surveyor who is registered with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors as having the qualifications, training, and experience to satisfy their professional requirements
- chattering classes — The chattering classes are people such as journalists, broadcasters, or public figures who comment on events but have little or no influence over them.
- chebyshev equation — Tchebycheff equation.
- chew someone's ear — to reprimand severely
- chickenheartedness — Alternative form of chicken-heartedness.
- children of israel — the Jews; Hebrews
- children's crusade — a crusade to recover Jerusalem from the Saracens, undertaken in 1212 by thousands of French and German children who perished, were sold into slavery, or were turned back.
- chinese fire drill — a state of chaotic, often clamorous disorder.
- chinese gooseberry — kiwi (sense 2)
- chinese revolution — the overthrow of the last Manchu emperor and the establishment of a republic in China (1911–12)
- chinese water deer — a small Chinese or Korean deer, Hydropotes inermis, having tusks and no antlers: introduced into England and France
- chinese watermelon — a tropical Asian vine, Benincasa hispida, of the gourd family, having a brown, hairy stem, large, solitary, yellow flowers, and white, melonlike fruit.
- chord of the sixth — sixth chord.
- chrétien de troyes — 12th century, French poet, who wrote the five Arthurian romances Erec; Cligès; Lancelot, le chevalier de la charette; Yvain, le chevalier au lion; and Perceval, le conte del Graal (?1155–?1190), the first courtly romances
- christian brethren — Brother of the Christian Schools.
- christian brothers — a religious congregation of laymen founded in France in 1684 for the education of the poor
- christian democrat — a member or supporter of a Christian Democratic party
- christian endeavor — an organization of young people of various evangelical Protestant churches, formed in 1881 to promote Christian principles and service.
- christian reformed — of or relating to a Protestant denomination (Christian Reformed Church) organized in the U.S. in 1857 by groups that had seceded from the Dutch Reformed Church.
- christine de pisan — ?1364–?1430, French poet and prose writer, born in Venice. Her works include ballads, rondeaux, lays, and a biography of Charles V of France
- christopher sholes — Christopher Latham [ley-thuh m,, -th uh m] /ˈleɪ θəm,, -ðəm/ (Show IPA), 1819–90, U.S. inventor of the typewriter.
- chromatic semitone — the pitch difference between one note and its sharpened or flattened equivalent
- citizenship papers — the document stating that a naturalized person has been formally declared a citizen
- clean as a whistle — If you describe something as clean as a whistle, you mean that it is completely clean.
- closed scholarship — a scholarship for which only certain people, such as those from a particular school or with a particular surname, are eligible
- coast rhododendron — a rhododendron, Rhododendron macrophyllum, of western North America, having large clusters of rose-purple flowers spotted with brown: the state flower of Washington.
- collection charges — the charges levied to cover expenses for the collection of debt
- colossus of rhodes — a giant bronze statue of Apollo built on Rhodes in about 292–280 bc; destroyed by an earthquake in 225 bc; one of the Seven Wonders of the World
- combustion chamber — an enclosed space in which combustion takes place, such as the space above the piston in the cylinder head of an internal-combustion engine or the chambers in a gas turbine or rocket engine in which fuel and oxidant burn
- come home to roost — If bad or wrong things that someone has done in the past have come home to roost, or if their chickens have come home to roost, they are now experiencing the unpleasant effects of these actions.
- come to grips with — If you come to grips with a problem, you consider it seriously, and start taking action to deal with it.
- come to terms with — If you come to terms with something difficult or unpleasant, you learn to accept and deal with it.
- commonwealth games — an event held every four years in which sportspeople from the countries of the Commonwealth compete
- comparison shopper — an employee of a retail store hired to visit competing stores in order to gather information regarding styles, quality, prices, etc., of merchandise offered by competitors.
- comprehensibleness — The quality of being comprehensible; comprehensibility.
- congregate housing — a type of housing in which each individual or family has a private bedroom or living quarters but shares with other residents a common dining room, recreational room, or other facilities.
- connected subgraph — (mathematics) A connected graph consisting of a subset of the nodes and edges of some other graph.
- considered harmful — (programming, humour) A type of phrase based on the title of Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous note in the March 1968 Communications of the ACM, "Goto Statement Considered Harmful", which fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars. Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently harmful that it will (by policy) no longer print articles taking so assertive a position against a coding practice. In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and parodies bore titles of the form "X considered Y". The structured-programming wars eventually blew over with the realisation that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has remained as a persistent minor in-joke.