17-letter words containing s, n, u
- captain's biscuit — a type of hard fancy biscuit
- carbon disulphide — a colourless slightly soluble volatile flammable poisonous liquid commonly having a disagreeable odour due to the presence of impurities: used as an organic solvent and in the manufacture of rayon and carbon tetrachloride. Formula: CS2
- cariboo mountains — a mountain range in SW Canada, in SE British Columbia. Highest peak: Mount Sir Wilfrid Laurier, 3520 m (11 549 ft)
- cartesian product — the set of all ordered pairs of members of two given sets. The product A × B is the set of all pairs <a, b> where a is a member of A and b is a member of B
- cast/run your eye — If you cast your eye or run your eye over something, you look at it or read it quickly.
- castilla la nueva — Spanish name of New Castile.
- casting the runes — (jargon) What a guru does when you ask him or her to run a particular program because it never works for anyone else; especially used when nobody can ever see what the guru is doing different from what J. Random Luser does. Compare incantation, runes, examining the entrails; also see the AI koan about Tom Knight.
- castor and pollux — the twin sons of Leda: Pollux was fathered by Zeus, Castor by the mortal Tyndareus. After Castor's death, Pollux spent half his days with his half-brother in Hades and half with the gods in Olympus
- caudal anesthesia — anesthesia below the pelvis, induced by injecting an anesthetic into the sacral portion of the spinal canal.
- cellulose nitrate — a compound made by treating cellulose with nitric and sulphuric acids, used in plastics, lacquers, and explosives: a nitrogen-containing ester of cellulose
- cellulose varnish — a varnish made from cellulose nitrate, used as a protective sealing film
- ch'eng-chu school — School of Law.
- chacun a son gout — each to his own taste
- chadless keypunch — (hardware) A card punch which cut little U-shapes in punched cards, rather than punching out a circle or rectangle. The U's made a hole when folded back. One of the Jargon File's correspondents believed that the term "chad" derived from the Chadless keypunch. Obviously, if the Chadless keypunch didn't make them, then the stuff that other keypunches made had to be "chad". The assertion that the keypunch was named after its inventor is not supported by any record in US or UK patents or surname references.
- châlons-sur-marne — city in NE France, on the Marne River: scene of defeat ( a.d. 451) of Attila by the Romans: pop. 50,000
- change one's tune — to alter one's attitude or tone of speech
- chart of accounts — A chart of accounts is a list of all the accounts used in a business to classify transactions or report balances.
- chemiluminescence — the phenomenon in which a chemical reaction leads to the emission of light without incandescence
- chemoluminescence — (chemistry) The emission of light as the result of a chemical reaction.
- chest measurement — the circumference of the trunk, measured around the middle of the chest
- chicken drumstick — a chicken leg, considered as food
- chiltern hundreds — (in Britain) short for Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds; a nominal office that an MP applies for in order to resign his seat
- chinese turkestan — the E part of the central Asian region of Turkestan: corresponds generally to the present-day Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China
- christmas pudding — Christmas pudding is a special pudding that is eaten at Christmas.
- chromosome number — the number of chromosomes present in each somatic cell, which is constant for any one species of plant or animal. In the reproductive cells this number is halved
- chugach mountains — a coastal mountain range in S Alaska, extending W from the St. Elias Mountains. Highest peak, Mount Marcus Baker, 13,176 feet (4016 meters).
- chukchi peninsula — a peninsula in the extreme NE of Russia, in NE Siberia: mainly tundra
- circassian walnut — the hard, heavy, brown or purplish wood of the English walnut
- circuit switching — (communications) Communication via a single dedicated path between the sender and receiver. The telephone system is an example of a circuit switched network. The term connection-oriented is used in packet-based networks in contrast to connectionless communication or packet switching.
- circumstantiality — the quality of being circumstantial
- circumstantiating — Present participle of circumstantiate.
- classical nahuatl — Aztec (def 2).
- classical-nahuatl — a member of a Nahuatl-speaking state in central Mexico that was conquered by Cortés in 1521.
- close punctuation — punctuation in which many commas, full stops, etc, are used
- club subscription — an amount of money that someone pays regularly in order to belong to a club
- clumber (spaniel) — a short-legged spaniel with a heavy body and a thick coat of straight, white hair marked with yellow or orange
- colour separation — the division of a coloured original into cyan, magenta, yellow, and black so that plates may be made for print reproduction. Separation may be achieved by electronic scanning or by photographic techniques using filters to isolate each colour
- colour supplement — A colour supplement is a colour magazine which is one of the sections of a newspaper, especially at weekends.
- colour television — television that broadcasts in real-life colours, as opposed to black and white
- combustion engine — any of various types of engines driven by energy produced by combustion.
- communicativeness — inclined to communicate or impart; talkative: He isn't feeling very communicative today.
- communion service — the Christian ceremony in which people eat bread and drink wine in memory of Christ's death
- community service — Community service is unpaid work that criminals sometimes do as a punishment instead of being sent to prison.
- community singing — singing, esp of hymns, by a large gathering of people
- complement clause — a subordinate clause that functions as the subject, direct object, or prepositional object of a verb, as that you like it in I'm surprised that you like it.
- compound interest — Compound interest is interest that is calculated both on an original sum of money and on interest which has previously been added to the sum. Compare simple interest.
- compound sentence — a sentence containing at least two coordinate clauses
- conceptualisation — The act of conceptualising, or something conceptualised.
- concessive clause — A concessive clause is a subordinate clause which refers to a situation that contrasts with the one described in the main clause. For example, in the sentence 'Although he was tired, he couldn't get to sleep', the first clause is a concessive clause.
- concurrent pascal — (language) An extension of a Pascal subset, Sequential Pascal, developed by Brinch Hansen in 1972-75. Concurrent Pascal was the first language to support monitors. It provided access to hardware devices through monitor calls and also supported processes and classes.