18-letter words containing s, p, i, n
- cape breton island — an island off SE Canada, in NE Nova Scotia, separated from the mainland by the Strait of Canso: its easternmost point is Cape Breton. Pop: 132 298 (2006). Area: 10 280 sq km (3970 sq miles)
- cape saint vincent — a headland at the SW extremity of Portugal: scene of several important naval battles, notably in 1797, when the British defeated the French and Spanish
- capital allowances — the money spent by a company on fixed assets which can be taken off the profits of the company before tax is imposed
- capital investment — the money that is invested in something
- capital punishment — Capital punishment is punishment which involves the legal killing of a person who has committed a serious crime such as murder.
- captain james cook — Frederick Albert, 1865–1940, U.S. physician and polar explorer.
- castration complex — an unconscious fear of having one's genitals removed, as a punishment for wishing to have sex with a parent
- championship point — a point that would decide the winner of a match that would decide the championship
- 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
- christmas shopping — shopping especially for Christmas presents, but also for Christmas food and drink, and all the other things required over the Christmas period.
- chronostratigraphy — The branch of geology concerned with establishing the absolute ages of strata.
- citizenship papers — the document stating that a naturalized person has been formally declared a citizen
- closed corporation — a corporation the stock of which is owned by a small number of persons and is rarely traded on the open market
- coitus interruptus — the deliberate withdrawal of the penis from the vagina before ejaculation
- community hospital — (in the US) a local hospital
- 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.
- compassion fatigue — the inability to react sympathetically to a crisis, disaster, etc, because of overexposure to previous crises, disasters, etc
- compassionlessness — The quality, state, or condition of being compassionless; uncompassion.
- compensation award — an amount of money awarded as compensation in a court case
- compensation order — (in Britain) the requirement of a court that an offender pay compensation for injury, loss, or damage resulting from an offence, either in preference to or as well as a fine
- compensation point — the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide at which the rate of carbon dioxide uptake by a photosynthesizing plant is exactly balanced by its rate of carbon dioxide release in respiration and photorespiration
- complementarianism — The doctrine that genders in a society should have complementary roles.
- composite function — a function obtained from two given functions, where the range of one function is contained in the domain of the second function, by assigning to an element in the domain of the first function that element in the range of the second function whose inverse image is the image of the element.
- composition rubber — manufactured rubber
- composition series — a normal series of subgroups in which no additional subgroups can be inserted.
- comprehensibleness — The quality of being comprehensible; comprehensibility.
- compression stroke — The compression stroke is the stroke in an engine in which the air or air/fuel mixture is compressed before ignition.
- compressor station — A compressor station is a facility with several compressors (= devices that increase the pressure of air or natural gas) and other equipment to pump natural gas under pressure over long distances.
- computer scientist — a person with advanced knowledge of computers and how they work
- concentration span — the length of time a person can concentrate on something
- conceptual realism — the doctrine that universals have real and independent existence.
- conceptualisations — Plural form of conceptualisation.
- conceptualizations — Plural form of conceptualization.
- condensation point — a point of which every neighborhood contains an uncountable number of points of a given set.
- conservative party — The Conservative Party is the main right-of-centre party in Britain.
- constituency party — a branch of a political party operating within a constituency
- construction paper — Construction paper is a type of stiff, colored paper that children use for drawing and for making things.
- constructive proof — (mathematics) A proof that something exists that provides an example or a method for actually constructing it. For example, for any pair of finite real numbers n < 0 and p > 0, there exists a real number 0 < k < 1 such that f(k) = (1-k)*n + k*p = 0. A constructive proof would proceed by rearranging the above to derive an equation for k: k = 1/(1-n/p) From this and the constraints on n and p, we can show that 0 < k < 1. A few mathematicians actually reject *all* non-constructive arguments as invalid; this means, for instance, that the law of the excluded middle (either P or not-P must hold, whatever P is) has to go; this makes proof by contradiction invalid. See intuitionistic logic. Constructive proofs are popular in theoretical computer science, both because computer scientists are less given to abstraction than mathematicians and because intuitionistic logic turns out to be an appropriate theoretical treatment of the foundations of computer science.
- continuous process — A continuous process is a process in which the product comes out without interruption and not in groups.
- conversation piece — something, esp an unusual object, that provokes conversation
- 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
- corps of engineers — a branch of the U.S. Army responsible for military and many civil engineering projects.
- 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.
- counterproposition — a proposition made in place of or in opposition to a preceding one.
- cranial osteopathy — osteopathy that focuses on the cranium and the spine
- 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
- 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