17-letter words containing u, n, c, a
- 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
- catapult-launched — (of aircraft) launched into the air by a device installed in warships
- 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
- centrifugal brake — a safety mechanism on a hoist, crane, etc, that consists of revolving brake shoes that are driven outwards by centrifugal force into contact with a fixed brake drum when the rope drum revolves at excessive speed
- centrifugal force — In physics, centrifugal force is the force that makes objects move outwards when they are spinning around something or travelling in a curve.
- 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.
- chemical equation — a representation of a chemical reaction using symbols of the elements to indicate the amount of substance, usually in moles, of each reactant and product
- chest measurement — the circumference of the trunk, measured around the middle of the chest
- chincoteague pony — a wild pony found on certain islands off the Virginia coast, apparently descended from Moorish ponies shipwrecked in this vicinity in the 16th century.
- 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.
- 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
- church of england — The Church of England is the main church in England. It has the Queen as its head and it does not recognize the authority of the Pope.
- church triumphant — those Christians in heaven who have triumphed over evil and the enemies of Christ.
- circassian walnut — the hard, heavy, brown or purplish wood of the English walnut
- circular function — trigonometric function (def 1).
- circular triangle — a triangle in which each side is the arc of a circle
- circumlocutionary — a roundabout or indirect way of speaking; the use of more words than necessary to express an idea.
- circumstantiality — the quality of being circumstantial
- circumstantiating — Present participle of circumstantiate.
- ciudad del carmen — a city in SE Mexico, on the Gulf of Campeche.
- clairaut equation — a differential equation of the form y = xy prime; + f (y prime;).
- 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
- cloud cuckoo land — an idealized, illusory domain of imagination; cloudland: the cloud-cuckoo-land of technicolor cartoon whimsy.
- cloud-cuckoo-land — If you say that someone is living in cloud-cuckoo-land, you are criticizing them because they think there are no problems and that things will happen exactly as they want them to, when this is obviously not the case.
- clumber (spaniel) — a short-legged spaniel with a heavy body and a thick coat of straight, white hair marked with yellow or orange
- colloquialization — The process or result of making colloquial.
- 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
- columnar jointing — (in basaltic igneous rocks) a series of generally hexagonal columns formed by vertical joints as a result of contraction during cooling.
- common of turbary — (in England) the legal right to cut peat for fuel on a common
- communal marriage — group marriage.
- communication gap — a lack of communication
- communicativeness — inclined to communicate or impart; talkative: He isn't feeling very communicative today.
- commuter airplane — air taxi.
- compilation album — a musical recording consisting of works chosen for a particular purpose or theme
- 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.
- complex conjugate — the complex number whose imaginary part is the negative of that of a given complex number, the real parts of both numbers being equal
- complex-conjugate — one of a group of conjugate words.
- compound fraction — complex fraction