20-letter words containing a, c, d, e, m
- diamondback terrapin — any edible North American terrapin of the genus Malaclemys, esp M. terrapin, occurring in brackish and tidal waters and having diamond-shaped markings on the shell: family Emydidae
- dichloroethyl formal — a colorless liquid, C 5 H 10 O 2 Cl 2 , used chiefly as a solvent and in the manufacture of certain synthetic rubbers.
- difference amplifier — A difference amplifier is a device that amplifies the difference between two inputs, rejecting any signals common to both.
- diplomatic secretary — secretary (def 5).
- diplomatic-secretary — secretary (def 5).
- direct memory access — (architecture) (DMA) A facility of some architectures which allows a peripheral to read and write memory without intervention by the CPU. DMA is a limited form of bus mastering.
- discretionary income — money for luxuries
- displacement current — the rate of change, at any point in space, of electric displacement with time.
- displacement tonnage — the number of long tons of water displaced by a vessel, light or load displacement being specified.
- distress merchandise — goods sold below the prevailing price in order to raise cash quickly or to meet some other financial emergency.
- do someone a service — If you do someone a service, you do something that helps or benefits them.
- documentary evidence — law: written
- domestic heating oil — a liquid petroleum product used to fuel residential building furnaces or boilers
- drum and bugle corps — a marching band of drum players and buglers.
- education department — the department of a local authority that is concerned with education, or the government department concerned with education
- electrohydrodynamics — (physics) the study of the dynamics of electrically conducting fluid.
- elementary education — the first six to eight years of a child's education
- essential amino acid — an amino acid that cannot be synthesized in the body and is thus an essential component of the diet
- force someone's hand — to force someone to act
- frederick william ii — 1744–97, king of Prussia 1786–97.
- frederick william iv — 1795–1861, king of Prussia 1840–61 (brother of William I of Prussia).
- frequency modulation — FM.
- friedrich max müller — Friedrich Max [free-drik maks;; German free-drikh mahks] /ˈfri drɪk mæks;; German ˈfri drɪx mɑks/ (Show IPA), 1823–1900, English Sanskrit scholar and philologist born in Germany.
- fundamental constant — a physical constant, such as the gravitational constant or speed of light, that plays a fundamental role in physics and chemistry and usually has an accurately known value
- fundamental particle — elementary particle.
- fundamental research — research carried out to deepen understanding of the fundamental or basic principles of something
- fundamental sequence — an infinite sequence, x 1 , x 2 , …, whose terms are points in Ek, in which there exists a point y such that the limit as n goes to infinity of xn = y if and only if for every ε>0, there exists a number N such that i > N and j > N implies | xi − xj |< ε. Also called Cauchy sequence, convergent sequence. Compare complete (def 10b).
- genetically modified — biologically altered
- guillaume de machaut — Guillaume de [French gee-yohm duh] /French giˈyoʊm də/ (Show IPA), Guillaume de Machaut.
- hexadecimal notation — a number system having a base 16; the symbols for the numbers 0–9 are the same as those used in the decimal system, and the numbers 10–15 are usually represented by the letters A–F. The system is used as a convenient way of representing the internal binary code of a computer
- hindu-arabic numeral — Arabic numeral.
- horizontal microcode — (processor) Microcode using horizontal encoding.
- hyperadrenocorticism — Cushing's syndrome.
- imported currantworm — the larva of any of several insects, as a sawfly, Nematus ribesii (imported currantworm) which infests and feeds on the leaves and fruit of currants.
- in bad circumstances — (of a person) in a bad financial situation
- in the public domain — able to be discussed and examined freely by the general public
- incomplete dominance — the appearance in a heterozygote of a trait that is intermediate between either of the trait's homozygous phenotypes.
- incorporated company — a legally constituted company
- incremental recorder — a device for recording data as it is generated, usually on paper tape or magnetic tape, and feeding it into a computer
- indian cucumber root — a North American plant, Medeola virginiana, of the lily family, having whorled leaves, nodding, greenish-yellow flowers, and an edible root.
- industrial democracy — control of an organization by the people who work for it, esp by workers holding positions on its board of directors
- intermediate section — The intermediate section is the section of the borehole after the top hole, which has more consolidated rock.
- jordan curve theorem — the theorem that the complement of a simple closed curve can be expressed as the union of two disjoint sets, each having as boundary the given curve.
- justifiable homicide — murder committed under extenuating circumstances
- lead someone a dance — to cause someone continued worry and exasperation; play up
- lieutenant commander — a commissioned officer ranking next below a commander and next above a lieutenant.
- macular degeneration — degeneration of the central portion of the retina, resulting in a loss of sharp vision.
- magnetic card reader — a device that scans and interprets information from a card with a magnetic stripe
- magnetic declination — variation (def 8).
- magneto-optical disk — (hardware, storage) (MO) A plastic or glass disk coated with a compound (often TbFeCo) with special optical, magnetic and thermal properties. The disk is read by bouncing a low-intensity laser off the disk. Originally the laser was infrared, but frequencies up to blue may be possible giving higher storage density. The polarisation of the reflected light depends on the polarity of the stored magnetic field. To write, a higher intensity laser heats the coating up to its Curie point, allowing its magnetisation to be altered in a way that is retained when it has cooled. Although optical, they appear as hard drives to the operating system and do not require a special filesystem (they can be formatted as FAT, HPFS, NTFS, etc.). The initial 5.25" MO drives, introduced at the end of the 1980s, were the size of a full-height 5.25" hard drive (like in IBM PC XT) and the disks looked like a CD-ROM enclosed in an old-style cartridge In 2006, a 3.5" drive has the size of 1.44 megabyte diskette drive with disks about the size of a regular 1.44MB floppy disc but twice the thickness.