21-letter words containing s, i, n, t, r
- british sign language — the main sign language used by deaf people in the United Kingdom
- british standard time — the standard time used in Britain all the year round from 1968 to 1971, set one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time and equalling Central European Time
- 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.
- burroughs corporation — (company) A company which merged with Sperry Univac to form Unisys Corporation. They produced the Datatron 200 series among other computers.
- bursting at the seams — If a place is very full, you can say that it is bursting at the seams.
- butterfly common lisp — A parallel version of Common LISP for the BBN Butterfly computer.
- 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
- casing collar locator — A casing collar locator is a tool that is placed down the borehole to allow depths to be measured by detecting the position of the casing collar.
- 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
- chief master sergeant — a solider of the highest enlisted rank in the US Air Force
- chinese forget-me-not — an eastern Asian plant, Cynoglossum amabile, of the borage family, having lance-shaped leaves and clustered, showy, blue, pink, or white flowers.
- 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
- christmas decorations — decorations of different kinds appropriate to Christmas, such as tinsel, candles, images of angels, etc.
- civil rights movement — campaign for human freedoms
- 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.
- clayton antitrust act — an act of Congress in 1914 supplementing the Sherman Antitrust Act and establishing the FTC.
- collins street farmer — a businessman who invests in farms, land, etc
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- composition of forces — the combination, by vector algebra, of two or more forces into a single equivalent force (the resultant)
- 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
- concurrent processing — the ability of a computer to process two or more programs in parallel
- concurrent resolution — a resolution passed by one branch of a legislature and concurred in by the other, indicating the opinion of the legislature but not having the force of law
- 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.
- confirm a reservation — If you confirm a reservation, you inform someone who has booked a room at a hotel that the reservation is definite.
- constantine the great — (Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus"the Great") a.d. 288?–337, Roman emperor 324–337: named Constantinople as the new capital; legally sanctioned Christian worship.
- constituent structure — phrase structure.
- constitutional strike — a stoppage of work by the workforce of an organization, with the approval of the trade union concerned, in accordance with the dispute procedure laid down in a collective agreement between the parties
- construction engineer — a person trained in the profession of planning and managing the construction of buildings, bridges, etc
- construction industry — a branch of commercial enterprise concerned with the construction of buildings, bridges, etc
- consummatory behavior — a behavior pattern that occurs in response to a stimulus and that achieves the satisfaction of a specific drive, as the eating of captured prey by a hungry predator (distinguished from appetitive behavior).
- continental breakfast — A continental breakfast is breakfast that consists of food such as bread, butter, jam, and a hot drink. There is no cooked food.
- continuing resolution — legislation enacted by Congress to allow government operations to continue until the regular appropriations are enacted: used when action on appropriations is not completed by the beginning of a fiscal year.
- continuous processing — the systems in a plant or factory for the manufacturing of products, treating of materials, etc, that have been designed to run continuously and are often computer-controlled