18-letter words containing s, i, n
- cornell university — (body, education) A US Ivy League University founded in 1868 by businessman Ezra Cornell and respected scholar Andrew Dickson White. Cornell includes thirteen colleges and schools. On the Ithaca campus are the seven undergraduate units and four graduate and professional units. The Medical College and the Graduate School of Medical Sciences are in New York City. Cornell has 13,300 undergraduates and 6,200 graduate and professional students. See also Concurrent ML, Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University Programming Language, CU-SeeMe, ISIS.
- cornucopian thesis — the belief that, as long as science and technology continue to advance, growth can continue for ever because these new advances create new resources
- coronary occlusion — partial or total obstruction of a coronary artery, as by a thrombus, usually resulting in infarction of the myocardium.
- corps of engineers — a branch of the U.S. Army responsible for military and many civil engineering projects.
- counseling service — an advice service
- counter-aggression — the action of a state in violating by force the rights of another state, particularly its territorial rights; an unprovoked offensive, attack, invasion, or the like: The army is prepared to stop any foreign aggression.
- counter-hypothesis — a proposition, or set of propositions, set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena, either asserted merely as a provisional conjecture to guide investigation (working hypothesis) or accepted as highly probable in the light of established facts.
- counterattractions — Plural form of counterattraction.
- counterculturalism — The counterculture movement or lifestyle.
- counterculturalist — the culture and lifestyle of those people, especially among the young, who reject or oppose the dominant values and behavior of society.
- counterproposition — a proposition made in place of or in opposition to a preceding one.
- counterrevolutions — Plural form of counterrevolution.
- countryside agency — (in England) a government agency that promotes the conservation and enjoyment of the countryside and aims to stimulate employment in rural areas
- cranial osteopathy — osteopathy that focuses on the cranium and the spine
- craniorachischisis — Lb pathology A defect of the neural tube in which both the brain and spinal cord are left open.
- creatine phosphate — phosphocreatine.
- creeping featurism — (jargon) /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ (Or "feature creep") A systematic tendency to load more chrome and features onto systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed when originally designed. "The main problem with BSD Unix has always been creeping featurism." More generally, creeping featurism is the tendency for anything to become more complicated because people keep saying "Gee, it would be even better if it had this feature too". The result is usually a patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra little feature to help someone, and then another, and another, .... When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a cancer. Usually this term is used to describe computer programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the IRS 1040 form, and new cars. A similar phenomenon sometimes afflicts conscious redesigns; see second-system effect. See also creeping elegance.
- creeping paralysis — any slow process that causes a system, government, etc, to stop working efficiently
- critical constants — the physical constants that express the properties of a substance in its critical state
- crocodile-infested — full of crocodiles
- cross-disciplinary — linking two or more fields of study
- crystal microphone — a microphone that uses a piezoelectric crystal to convert sound energy into electrical energy
- cultural diffusion — act of diffusing; state of being diffused.
- cultural universal — a cultural pattern extant in every known society.
- cumbrian mountains — a mountain range in NW England, in Cumbria. Highest peak: Scafell Pike, 977 m (3206 ft)
- cumulative scoring — a method of scoring in which the score of a partnership is taken as the sum of their scores on all hands played.
- cursor dipped in x — (jargon) The metaphorical source of the electronic equivalent of a poisoned-pen letter. Derived from English metaphors of the form "pen dipped in X" (where X = e.g. "acid", "bile", "vitriol"). These map over neatly to this hackish usage (the cursor being what moves, leaving letters behind, when one is composing on-line). "Talk about a nastygram! He must've had his cursor dipped in acid when he wrote that one!"
- cushing's syndrome — a medical condition characterized by obesity, hypertension, excessive hair growth, etc., caused by an overactive adrenal gland or large doses of corticosteroids
- custodial sentence — a sentence given by a court that involves a term of imprisonment
- customer relations — Customer relations are the relationships that a business has with its customers and the way in which it treats them.
- customs and excise — Customs and Excise is a British government department which is responsible for collecting taxes on imported and exported goods. Compare Customs Service.
- customs inspection — an inspection carried out by a customs department
- cytoarchitectonics — Cytoarchitecture.
- dagwood (sandwich) — a thick sandwich with a variety of fillings, often of apparently incompatible foods
- daisywheel printer — (printer) A kind of impact printer where the characters are arranged on the ends of the spokes of a wheel (resembling the petals on a daisy). The wheel (usually made of plastic) is rotated to select the character to print and then an electrically operated hammer mechanism bends the selected spoke forward slightly, sandwiching an ink ribbon between the character and the paper, as in a typewriter. One advantage of this arrangement over that of a typewriter is that different wheels may be inserted to produce different typefaces.
- danish west indies — the former possession of Denmark in the W Lesser Antilles, sold to the US in 1917
- data flow analysis — (programming) A process to discover the dependencies between different data items manipulated by a program. The order of execution in a data driven language is determined solely by the data dependencies. For example, given the equations 1. X = A + B 2. B = 2 + 2 3. A = 3 + 4 a data-flow analysis would find that 2 and 3 must be evaluated before 1. Since there are no data dependencies between 2 and 3, they may be evaluated in any order, including in parallel. This technique is implemented in hardware in some pipelined processors with multiple functional units. It allows instructions to be executed as soon as their inputs are available, independent of the original program order.
- daytime television — television broadcasts that are shown during the daytime rather than in the evening
- dead as a doornail — completely dead
- dead man's fingers — a soft coral, Alcyonium digitatum, with long finger-like polyps
- dead-man's fingers — any of various fungi, sponges, plant roots, animal parts, etc., having fingerlike projections and a pale or dull color, as the gray-black woodland fungus Xylaria polymorpha or the whitish spongy gills of a food crab.
- dead-stick landing — Aeronautics, Aerospace. a landing of an airplane or space vehicle with the engine cut off.
- deanthropomorphism — the ridding of philosophy or religion of anthropomorphic beliefs and doctrines.
- debt consolidation — the process of taking out a new loan (often secured on one's property) in order to pay off a number of existing debts
- debt restructuring — Debt restructuring is a method of organizing a company's debts in a different way in order to make the company more likely to be able to pay them.
- dechristianization — The act of dechristianizing; the systematic removal of Christianity or Christian elements.
- decision procedure — a procedure, as an algorithm, for determining in a finite number of steps the validity of any of a certain class of propositions.
- deep-discount bond — a fixed-interest security that pays little or no interest but is issued at a substantial discount to its redemption value, thus largely substituting capital gain for income
- deep-sea fisherman — a person who takes part in deep-sea fishing
- defensive medicine — the practice by a doctor of ordering extensive, often unnecessary tests in order to minimize liability if accused of negligence