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20-letter words containing n, i, s

  • congressional record — (in the US) the government journal that publishes all proceedings of Congress
  • connector conspiracy — (business, standard)   The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension, other designers) to come up with products that don't fit with the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive interface devices. The term probably came into prominence with the appearance of the DEC KL-10, none of whose connectors matched anything else. The KL-10 Massbus connector was actually *patented* by DEC, who reputedly refused to licence the design, thus effectively locking out competition for the lucrative Massbus peripherals market. This policy was a source of frustration for the owners of dying, obsolescent disk and tape drives. A related phenomenon is the invention of new screw heads so that only Designated Persons, possessing the magic screwdrivers, can remove covers and make repairs or install options. Older Apple Macintoshes took this one step further, requiring not only a hex wrench but a specialised case-cracking tool to open the box. With the advent of more open-systems computing this term has fallen somewhat into disuse. Compare backward combatability.
  • conscious uncoupling — the ending of a romantic relationship or marriage in a respectful, positive, and constructive way.
  • conservation of mass — the principle that the total mass of any isolated system is constant and is independent of any chemical and physical changes taking place within the system
  • conservative baptist — a member of a Protestant denomination (Conservative Baptist Association of America) organized in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1948.
  • conservative judaism — a movement reacting against the radicalism of Reform Judaism, rejecting extreme change and advocating moderate relaxations of traditional Jewish law, by an extension of the process by which its adherents claim traditional Orthodox Judaism evolved
  • constituent assembly — A constituent assembly is a body of representatives that is elected to create or change their country's constitution.
  • construction company — a business enterprise concerned with the construction of buildings, bridges, etc
  • consultant physician — a physician who has attained the rank of consultant in a particular speciality
  • consumer electronics — computers and other electronic devices designed for private individuals as opposed to businesses
  • consumer price index — The consumer price index is an official measure of the rate of inflation within a country's economy. The abbreviation CPI is also used.
  • contact metamorphism — localized metamorphism resulting from the heat of an igneous intrusion.
  • context of situation — the totality of extralinguistic features having relevance to a communicative act.
  • continental congress — the assembly of delegates from the North American rebel colonies held during and after the War of American Independence. It issued the Declaration of Independence (1776) and framed the Articles of Confederation (1777)
  • continuous variation — variation in phenotypic traits such as body weight or height in which a series of types are distributed on a continuum rather than grouped into discrete categories. Compare discontinuous variation.
  • continuum hypothesis — the assertion that there is no set whose cardinality is greater than that of the integers and smaller than that of the reals
  • contradistinguishing — Present participle of contradistinguish.
  • controlled explosion — the deliberate detonation of an explosive device under strictly controlled circumstances
  • controlling interest — a quantity of shares in a business that is sufficient to ensure control over its direction
  • convective discharge — the repulsion of ions of a gas by a highly charged body, creating a discernible wind.
  • conventional weapons — weapons which are not nuclear
  • conversation stopper — a comment that is so shocking or boring that people stop talking
  • copulative asyndeton — a staccato effect produced by omitting copulative connectives between two or more items in a group, as in “Friends, Romans, countrymen.”.
  • corresponding angles — a pair of nonadjacent angles, one interior and one exterior, on the same side of a transversal: these paired angles are equal if the lines cut by the transversal are parallel
  • corruption of minors — the criminal offence of inducing people below the age of consent to engage in sexual activity
  • cost-of-living index — a numerical scale by means of which cost-of-living levels can be compared with a base number
  • council of ministers — the EU's most important decision-making body
  • count one's chickens — If you say that someone is counting their chickens, you mean that they are assuming that they will be successful or get something, when this is not certain.
  • counterdemonstration — a demonstration that is held in reaction to another demonstration
  • counterrevolutionist — A counterrevolutionary.
  • craft apprenticeship — a period of training for a skilled trade in industry, such as for a plumber or electrician
  • craniosacral therapy — a form of therapy for various disorders in which the therapist manipulates the bones of the skull
  • crime against nature — Law. sodomy.
  • crime and punishment — a novel (1866) by Feodor Dostoevsky.
  • criminal proceedings — action taken in a court to bring a criminal prosecution against someone
  • criminal syndicalism — the doctrine of recourse to acts of violence or terrorism, or the advocacy of such acts, as a means of effecting economic or political change: proscribed by statute in many U.S. states.
  • crisis of confidence — a serious loss of confidence
  • cross someone's mind — to come suddenly or briefly to someone's mind
  • cross-country skiing — the activity of skiing across open country for pleasure
  • crossover distortion — distortion that sometimes occurs at a frequency (crossover frequency) at which a crossover network switches signals from one speaker to another.
  • crossword dictionary — a dictionary that lists common clues found in crossword puzzles with potential answer words. In books, the lists are usually sorted by the number of letters in the answer, while an online crossword dictionary, such as the Dictionary.com Crossword Solver, is able to analyze queries electronically, examining either the clue or the number and pattern of letters already filled in to arrive at suggested answers.
  • cut of someone's jib — someone's manner, behaviour, style, etc
  • cutting-out scissors — a type of scissors used to cut out pieces of fabric for sewing
  • cycloidal propulsion — propulsion of a vessel by propellers of controllable pitch that steer as well as propel.
  • cylinder head gasket — (in an automobile engine) a gasket placed between the cylinder and the cylinder heads to avoid leaks of coolant and compression
  • cytosine arabinoside — cytarabine.
  • database transaction — (database)   A set of related changes applied to a database. The term typically implies that either all of the changes should be applied or, in the event of an error, none of them, i.e. the transaction should be atomic. Atomicity is one of the ACID properties a transaction can have, another is isolation - preventing interference between processes trying to access the database cocurrently. This is usually achieved by some form of locking - where one process takes exclusive control of a database table or row for the duration of the transaction, preventing other processes from accessing the locked data. The canonical example of a transaction is transferring money between two bank accounts by subtracting it from one and adding it to the other. Some relational database management systems require the user to explicitly start a transaction and then either commit it (if all the individual steps are successful) or roll it back (if there are any errors).
  • daylight saving time — Daylight Saving Time is a period of time in the summer when the clocks are set one hour forward, so that people can have extra light in the evening.
  • daylight-saving time — the civil time observed when daylight saving is adopted in a country or community.
  • de facto segregation — racial, ethnic, or other segregation resulting from societal differences between groups, as socioeconomic or political disparity, without institutionalized legislation intended to segregate.
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