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20-letter words containing t, r, a, c, e

  • armchair quarterback — a person who is not a quarterback (or general, etc.), but offers opinions and criticism on the performance or decisions of those who are
  • articulatory feature — a property of a speech sound based on its voicing or on its place or manner of articulation in the vocal tract, as voiceless, bilabial, or stop used in describing the sound (p).
  • artificial pacemaker — an electronic device for use in certain cases of heart disease to assume the functions of the natural cardiac pacemaker
  • artificial satellite — a man-made device orbiting around the earth, moon, or another planet transmitting to earth scientific information or used for communication
  • artificial selection — a process in the breeding of animals and in the cultivation of plants by which the breeder chooses to perpetuate only those forms having certain desirable inheritable characteristics.
  • asexual reproduction — reproduction, as budding, fission, or spore formation, not involving the union of gametes.
  • assessment procedure — an established method of assessing students or workers
  • astatic galvanometer — a galvanometer that is unaffected by the earth's magnetic field and is used for measuring small currents.
  • asymmetrical warfare — warfare between a powerful military force and a weak guerilla force
  • at someone's service — ready to serve or cooperate with someone
  • at the crack of dawn — If you say that someone does something at the crack of dawn, you are emphasizing that they do it very early in the morning.
  • at two hours' notice — with notification only two hours in advance
  • atmospheric pressure — Atmospheric pressure is the pressure of the atmosphere on the Earth's surface.
  • attachment parenting — a style of child rearing aimed at developing a strong emotional bond between the child and primary caregiver. See also attachment (def 3a).
  • attacks as a service — (security, legal)   A kind of cybercrime as a service in which the service provider performs denial of service attacks on behalf of others for money.
  • automobile insurance — Automobile insurance is insurance coverage for cars.
  • axiomatic set theory — (theory)   One of several approaches to set theory, consisting of a formal language for talking about sets and a collection of axioms describing how they behave. There are many different axiomatisations for set theory. Each takes a slightly different approach to the problem of finding a theory that captures as much as possible of the intuitive idea of what a set is, while avoiding the paradoxes that result from accepting all of it, the most famous being Russell's paradox. The main source of trouble in naive set theory is the idea that you can specify a set by saying whether each object in the universe is in the "set" or not. Accordingly, the most important differences between different axiomatisations of set theory concern the restrictions they place on this idea (known as "comprehension"). NBG (von Neumann-Bernays-Goedel) set theory sort of allows comprehension for all formulae without restriction, but distinguishes between two kinds of set, so that the sets produced by applying comprehension are only second-class sets. NBG is exactly as powerful as ZF, in the sense that any statement that can be formalised in both theories is a theorem of ZF if and only if it is a theorem of ZFC. MK (Morse-Kelley) set theory is a strengthened version of NBG, with a simpler axiom system. It is strictly stronger than NBG, and it is possible that NBG might be consistent but MK inconsistent. ML ("Modern Logic") is to NF as NBG is to ZF. (Its name derives from the title of the book in which Quine introduced an early, defective, form of it). It is stronger than ZF (it can prove things that ZF can't), but if NF is consistent then ML is too.
  • baccalaureate sermon — a farewell sermon addressed to a graduating class in some U.S. colleges and schools.
  • back the wrong horse — to bet on a horse that loses the race
  • backwards compatible — backward compatibility
  • bacteriochlorophylls — Plural form of bacteriochlorophyll.
  • balanced three-phase — A balanced three-phase voltage or current is one in which the size of each phase is the same, and the phase angles of the three phases differ from each other by 120 degrees.
  • ballet-wrap cardigan — a cardigan with wrapover fronts which are fastened with wraparound ties
  • ballistic trajectory — the path of an unpowered object, as a missile, moving only under the influence of gravity and possibly atmospheric friction and with its surface providing no significant lift to alter the course of flight.
  • basal metabolic rate — the rate at which heat is produced by the body at rest, 12 to 14 hours after eating, measured in kilocalories per square metre of body surface per hour
  • basic lead carbonate — ceruse.
  • basic object adapter — (architecture)   (BOA) Part of the CORBA architecture.
  • basic rate interface — (communications)   (BRI, 2B+D, 2B1D) An Integrated Services Digital Network channel consisting of two 64 kbps "bearer" (B) channels and one 16 kbps "delta" (D) channel, giving a total data rate of 144 kbps. The B channels are used for voice or user data, and the D channel is used for control and signalling and/or X.25 packet networking. BRI is the kind of ISDN interface most likely to be found in residential service.
  • bats-wing coral-tree — a small tree, Erythrina verspertilio, of tropical and subtropical Australia with red flowers and leaves shaped like the wings of a bat
  • be called to the bar — to become a barrister
  • biological diversity — Biological diversity is the same as biodiversity.
  • black-throated diver — a diving bird, Gavia arctica, found in Europe and Asia, and a rare summer visitor to the UK
  • blast-furnace cement — a type of cement made from a blend of ordinary Portland cement and crushed slag from a blast furnace. It has lower setting properties than ordinary Portland cement
  • blending inheritance — the blending of characteristics of the parents in the offspring, as in a pink flower that results from the mating of a red flower with a white one
  • blue screen of death — (humour)   (BSOD) The infamous white-on-blue text screen which appears when Microsoft Windows crashes. BSOD is mostly seen on the 16-bit systems such as Windows 3.1, but also on Windows 95 and apparently even under Windows NT 4. It is most likely to be caused by a GPF, although Windows 95 can do it if you've removed a required CD-ROM from the drive. It is often impossible to recover cleanly from a BSOD. The acronym BSOD is sometimes used as a verb, e.g. "Windoze just keeps BSODing on me today".
  • bolometric magnitude — the magnitude of a star derived either from the total energy that it radiates at all wavelengths or from the total energy of those of its wavelengths that are received on earth.
  • boulogne billancourt — a suburb of Paris, in N France.
  • boulogne-billancourt — an industrial suburb of SW Paris. Pop: 106 367 (1999)
  • branch target buffer — (processor)   (BTB) A register used to store the predicted destination of a branch in a processor using branch prediction?
  • breadth-first search — (algorithm)   A graph search algorithm which tries all one-step extensions of current paths before trying larger extensions. This requires all current paths to be kept in memory simultaneously, or at least their end points. Opposite of depth-first search. See also best first search.
  • bring home the bacon — If you bring home the bacon, you achieve what you needed to achieve.
  • buoyancy compensator — an inflatable vest used to control one's buoyancy underwater or to rest at the surface, usually having a connecting hose for inflation or deflation by mouth and a CO 2 cartridge for rapid, emergency inflation.
  • bureau of the census — the division of the Department of Commerce that gathers, tabulates, and correlates census statistics.
  • butterfly-shell clam — coquina.
  • by their own account — If you say that something concerning a particular person is true by his or her own account, you mean that you believe it because that person has said it is true.
  • caesar and cleopatra — a comedy (1898) by G. B. Shaw.
  • calcium hypochlorite — a white, crystalline compound, Ca(OCl) 2 , used as a disinfectant and bleaching agent.
  • calcium permanganate — a violet, crystalline, deliquescent solid, Ca(MnO 4) 2 ⋅4H 2 O, used chiefly as a disinfectant and deodorizer.
  • call-by-value-result — An argument passing convention where the actual argument is a variable V whose value is copied to a local variable L inside the called function or procedure. If the procedure modifies L, these changes will not affect V, which may also be in scope inside the procedure, until the procedure returns when the final value of L is copied to V. Under call-by-reference changes to L would affect V immediately. Used, for example, by BBC BASIC V on the Acorn Archimedes.
  • call-level interface — (database, standard)   (SQL/CLI) A programming interface designed to support SQL access to databases from shrink-wrapped application programs. CLI was originally created by a subcommittee of the SQL Access Group (SAG). The SAG/CLI specification was published as the Microsoft Open DataBase Connectivity (ODBC) specification in 1992. In 1993, SAG submitted the CLI to the ANSI and ISO SQL committees. SQL/CLI provides an international standard implementation-independent CLI to access SQL databases. Client-server tools can easily access databases through dynamic link libraries. It supports and encourages a rich set of client-server tools. SQL/CLI is an addendum to 1992 SQL standard (SQL-92). It was completed as ISO standard ISO/IEC 9075-3:1995 Information technology -- Database languages -- SQL -- Part 3: Call-Level Interface (SQL/CLI). The current SQL/CLI effort is adding support for SQL3.
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