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18-letter words starting with c

  • catapult launching — the fact of launching aircraft into the air by a device installed in warships
  • catastrophe theory — a mathematical theory that classifies surfaces according to their form
  • catch as catch can — Also, catch-can. taking advantage of any opportunity; using any method that can be applied: a catch-as-catch-can life, as an itinerant handyman.
  • catch one's breath — When you catch your breath while you are doing something energetic, you stop for a short time so that you can start breathing normally again.
  • catch-as-catch-can — a style of wrestling in which trips, holds below the waist, etc, are allowed
  • catcher in the rye — a novel (1951) by J. D. Salinger.
  • categorial grammar — a theory that characterizes syntactic categories in terms of functions between classes of expressions. The basic classes are names (N) and sentences (S). Intransitive verbs are symbols for functions which take a name and yield a sentence (written S/N), adverbs form compound verbs from verbs (for example, run fast) and so are (S/N)/(S/N), etc
  • caterpillar hunter — any of various carabid beetles of the genus Calosoma, of Europe and North America, which prey on the larvae of moths and butterflies
  • catherine of siena — Saint. 1347–80, Italian mystic and ascetic; patron saint of the Dominican order. Feast day: April 29
  • cathode dark space — Crookes dark space.
  • cationic detergent — a type of detergent in which the active part of the molecule is a positive ion (cation). Cationic detergents are usually quaternary ammonium salts and often also have bactericidal properties
  • catskill mountains — a mountain range in SE New York State: resort. Highest peak: Slide Mountain, 1261 m (4204 ft)
  • caucasus mountains — a mountain range in SW Russia, running along the N borders of Georgia and Azerbaijan, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea: mostly over 2700 m (9000 ft). Highest peak: Mount Elbrus, 5642 m (18 510 ft)
  • cauliflower cheese — a dish of cauliflower with a cheese sauce, eaten hot
  • cauliflower fungus — a large edible white to yellowish cauliflowerlike mushroom, Sparassis radicata, widely distributed in North America.
  • causa sine qua non — an indispensable condition; requisite.
  • ceiling decoration — a plaster moulding for the centre of a ceiling; other decoration, such as coving
  • celestial guidance — the guidance of a spacecraft or missile by reference to the position of one or more celestial bodies
  • celestial latitude — the angular distance of a celestial body north or south from the ecliptic
  • celestial marriage — the rite or state of marriage, performed in a Mormon temple by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and believed to continue beyond death.
  • cellular automaton — (algorithm, parallel)   (CA, plural "- automata") A regular spatial lattice of "cells", each of which can have any one of a finite number of states. The state of all cells in the lattice are updated simultaneously and the state of the entire lattice advances in discrete time steps. The state of each cell in the lattice is updated according to a local rule which may depend on the state of the cell and its neighbors at the previous time step. Each cell in a cellular automaton could be considered to be a finite state machine which takes its neighbours' states as input and outputs its own state. The best known example is J.H. Conway's game of Life.
  • cellular telephone — a mobile phone
  • center of symmetry — a point within a crystal through which any straight line extends to points on opposite surfaces of the crystal at equal distances.
  • central government — the government of a state or country
  • central projection — a projection of one plane onto a second plane such that a point on the first plane and its image on the second plane lie on a straight line through a fixed point not on either plane.
  • centralized school — a public school formed from the pupils and teachers of a number of discontinued smaller schools, especially in a rural district.
  • centre of pressure — the point in a body at which the resultant pressure acts when the body is immersed in a fluid
  • centrifugal clutch — an automatic clutch in which the friction surfaces are engaged by weighted levers acting under centrifugal force at a certain speed of rotation
  • centum call second — (unit)   (CCS) A unit used (in North America) to quantify the total traffic running in a network. 1 CCS is 100 call-seconds. That means 1 CCS could be 2 calls of 50 seconds duration or 20 calls of 5 seconds duration.
  • cepheid (variable) — any of a class of pulsating, yellow, supergiant stars whose brightness varies in regular periods: from the period-luminosity relation, the distance of such a star can be determined
  • cereal leaf beetle — an Old World leaf beetle, Oulema melanopus, introduced into North America in 1962: a serious pest of small grains, especially oats and cereal grasses.
  • cerebral dominance — the normal tendency for one half of the brain, usually the left cerebral hemisphere in right-handed people, to exercise more control over certain functions (e.g. handedness and language) than the other
  • cerenkov radiation — radiation emitted when a charged particle travels through a medium at a speed greater than the speed of light through that medium
  • certification mark — a mark that certifies the origin, material, quality, mode of manufacture, accuracy, or other characteristic of a product or service: “UL” is a certification mark for appliances meeting the safety standards of Underwriters Laboratories, Inc.
  • cervical screening — a screening for cervical cancer
  • cesarean (section) — a surgical operation for delivering a baby by cutting through the mother's abdominal and uterine walls
  • chagos archipelago — group of islands in the Indian Ocean 1,180 mi (1,899 km) northeast of Mauritius, comprising the British Indian Ocean Territory: chief island, Diego Garcia
  • chamber of horrors — a room, for example in a waxworks, containing objects, images or representations of people or scenes that are believed likely to frighten or horrify visitors
  • chambered nautilus — nautilus (def 1).
  • championship point — a point that would decide the winner of a match that would decide the championship
  • chandelier earring — one of a pair of long and ornate earrings that dangle from the earlobes, usually dropping from more than one level.
  • change one's spots — to reform one's character
  • change the subject — to select a new topic of conversation
  • changement de pied — a jump in which the dancer's feet are reversed from the starting position.
  • character disorder — a disorder characterized by socially undesirable behavior, as poor control of impulses or inability to maintain close emotional relationships, and by absence of anxiety or guilt.
  • character encoding — (character)   (Or "character encoding scheme") A mapping between binary data values and character code positions (or "code points"). Early systems stored characters in a variety of ways, e.g. four six-bit characters in a 24-bit word, but around 1960, eight-bit bytes started to become the most common data storage layout, with each character stored in one byte, typically in the ASCII character set. In the case of ASCII, the character encoding is an identity mapping: code position 65 maps to the byte value 65. This is possible because ASCII uses only code positions representable as single bytes, i.e., values between 0 and 255. (US-ASCII only uses values 0 to 127, in fact.) From the late 1990s, there was increased use of larger character sets such as Unicode and many CJK coded character sets. These can represent characters from many languages and more symbols.
  • character graphics — ASCII art
  • character-building — improving certain good or useful traits in a person's character, esp self-reliance, endurance, and courage
  • characteristically — Also, characteristical. pertaining to, constituting, or indicating the character or peculiar quality of a person or thing; typical; distinctive: Red and gold are the characteristic colors of autumn.
  • charge conjugation — the mathematical operation of replacing every elementary particle by its antiparticle. Symbol: C.
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