18-letter words containing a, v, o, t
- compact video disc — a compact laser disc that plays both pictures and sound
- comparative method — a body of procedures and criteria used by linguists to determine whether and how two or more languages are related and to reconstruct forms of their hypothetical parent language.
- concrete universal — a principle that necessarily has universal import but is also concrete by virtue of its arising in historical situations.
- conductivity water — water that has a conductivity of less than 0.043 × 10–6 S cm–1
- conservation grade — relating to food produced using traditional methods where possible, and following strict specifications regarding animal feeds and welfare, the use of chemical fertilizers, wildlife conservation, and land management
- conservative party — The Conservative Party is the main right-of-centre party in Britain.
- continental divide — the watershed of a continent, esp (often caps.) the principal watershed of North America, formed by the Rocky Mountains
- contrastive stress — a stress imposed on a word or syllable contrary to its normal accentuation in order to contrast it with an alternative word or syllable or to focus attention on it, as the stress given to the normally unstressed word of in government of the people, by the people, for the people in order to point up the parallel between of, by, and for and to distinguish of from words such as over or against.
- convenience market — the area of business which involves selling convenience foods
- conversation chair — an English chair of the 18th century designed to be straddled facing the back of the chair with the elbows resting on the crest rail: an English imitation of the voyeuse.
- conversation class — a class in which one learns to speak a foreign language
- conversation piece — something, esp an unusual object, that provokes conversation
- conversationalists — Plural form of conversationalist.
- cumulative scoring — a method of scoring in which the score of a partnership is taken as the sum of their scores on all hands played.
- curvature of field — a monochromatic aberration of a lens or other optical system in which the focal surface is curved, the refracted image of an object oriented perpendicular to the axis of the lens lying on a curved surface rather than in a plane perpendicular to the axis.
- curvature of space — (in relativity) a property of space near massive bodies in which their gravitational field causes light to travel along curved paths.
- daytime television — television broadcasts that are shown during the daytime rather than in the evening
- digital switchover — the process of changing the method of transmitting television from analogue to digital format
- digital television — a television broadcasting technology in which signals are transmitted as a sequence of binary numbers.
- digital video disc — Digital Versatile Disc
- diplomatic service — diplomatic corps
- divine inspiration — insight provided by higher power
- division algorithm — the theorem that an integer can be written as the sum of the product of two integers, one a given positive integer, added to a positive integer smaller than the given positive integer. Compare Euclidean algorithm.
- do not give a hoot — If you say that you don't give a hoot or don't care two hoots about something, you are emphasizing that you do not care at all about it.
- double achievement — a representation of the arms of a husband beside those of his wife such that a difference of rank between them is shown.
- dragline excavator — a power shovel that operates by being dragged by cables at the end of an arm or jib: used for quarrying, opencast mining, etc
- driver's education — high-school driving classes
- electrovalent bond — a type of chemical bond in which one atom loses an electron to form a positive ion and the other atom gains the electron to form a negative ion. The resulting ions are held together by electrostatic attraction
- elizabeth petrovna — 1709-62; empress of Russia (1741-62): daughter of Peter I
- enantioselectivity — (chemistry) The selectivity of a reaction towards one of a pair of enantiomers.
- environment agency — an official agency providing information on environmental issues, esp rivers, flooding and pollution
- evapotranspiration — The process by which water is transferred from the land to the atmosphere by evaporation from the soil and other surfaces and by transpiration from plants.
- every now and then — from time to time; occasionally
- evolution strategy — (ES) A kind of evolutionary algorithm where individuals (potential solutions) are encoded by a set of real-valued "object variables" (the individual's "genome"). For each object variable an individual also has a "strategy variable" which determines the degree of mutation to be applied to the corresponding object variable. The strategy variables also mutate, allowing the rate of mutation of the object variables to vary. An ES is characterised by the population size, the number of offspring produced in each generation and whether the new population is selected from parents and offspring or only from the offspring. ES were invented in 1963 by Ingo Rechenberg, Hans-Paul Schwefel at the Technical University of Berlin (TUB) while searching for the optimal shapes of bodies in a flow.
- federal government — pertaining to or of the nature of a union of states under a central government distinct from the individual governments of the separate states, as in federal government; federal system.
- forgive and forget — be reconciled
- geneva conventions — one of a series of international agreements, first made in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1864, establishing rules for the humane treatment of prisoners of war and of the sick, the wounded, and the dead in battle.
- gravitational lens — a heavy, dense body, as a galaxy, that lies along our line of sight to a more distant object, as a quasar, and whose gravitational field refracts the light of that object, splitting it into multiple images as seen from the earth.
- gravitational mass — the mass of a body as measured by its gravitational attraction for other bodies.
- gravitational pull — force of gravity
- gravitational wave — (in general relativity) a propagating wave of gravitational energy produced by accelerating masses, especially during catastrophic events, as the gravitational collapse of massive stars.
- half-open interval — a set of numbers between two given numbers but including only one endpoint.
- have (got) it made — to be assured of success
- have a slate loose — to be eccentric or crazy
- have a thing about — If you have a thing about someone or something, you have very strong feelings about them.
- have by the throat — to have compete control over (a person or thing)
- have got to do sth — You use have got to when you are saying that something is necessary or must happen in the way stated. In informal American English, the 'have' is sometimes omitted.
- have money to burn — to have more money than one needs, so that some can be spent foolishly
- have no hesitation — If you say that you have no hesitation in doing something, you are emphasizing that you will do it immediately or willingly because you are certain that it is the right thing to do.
- have one's moments — If you say that someone or something has their moments, you are indicating that there are times when they are successful or interesting, but that this does not happen very often.