17-letter words containing a, c, d, i
- decriminalization — to eliminate criminal penalties for or remove legal restrictions against: to decriminalize marijuana.
- deductible clause — a clause in an insurance policy stipulating that the insured will be liable for a specified initial amount of each loss, injury, etc., and that the insurance company will be liable for any additional costs up to the insured amount.
- deductive tableau — (tool) A theorem proof system consisting of a table whose rows contain assertions or goals. Variables in assertions are implicitly universally quantified and variables in goals are implicitly existentially quantified. The declarative meaning of a tableau is that if every instance of every assertion is true then some instance of at least one of the goals is true.
- defence mechanism — A defence mechanism is a way of behaving or thinking which is not conscious or deliberate and is an automatic reaction to unpleasant experiences or feelings such as anxiety and fear.
- defense mechanism — A defense mechanism is a way of behaving or thinking which is not conscious or deliberate and is an automatic reaction to unpleasant experiences or feelings such as anxiety and fear.
- deficit financing — Deficit financing is the financing of government spending through borrowing rather than revenue.
- dehistoricization — The process or result of dehistoricizing.
- dehydrochlorinase — an enzyme that catalyzes the removal of hydrogen and chlorine atoms or ions from chlorinated hydrocarbons.
- dehydrochlorinate — to remove hydrogen chloride or chlorine and hydrogen from (a substance).
- delay instruction — delayed control-transfer
- dendroclimatology — The science that uses dendrochronology to reconstruct historical climate conditions.
- denial of service — a deliberate interruption in access to a computer system or network, esp by using multiple computers to generate an unmanageable volume of traffic (distributed denial of service)
- denial-of-service — pertaining to or being an incident in which a computer or computer network is disabled, disrupting access or service: a website hit by a denial-of-service attack; unintentional denial-of-service problems.
- dental technician — a person who constructs and repairs artificial teeth
- deoxyribonuclease — DNase.
- dephlogisticating — Present participle of dephlogisticate.
- despotic monarchy — absolute monarchy.
- desynchronisation — (British spelling) Alternative form of desynchronization.
- desynchronization — to cause to indicate the same time, as one timepiece with another: Synchronize your watches.
- deterministically — the doctrine that all facts and events exemplify natural laws.
- deucalion's flood — a flood sent by Zeus that wiped out the entire population of the earth, except for Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha
- devil's food cake — a rich chocolate cake
- diacetone alcohol — a colorless, flammable liquid with a pleasant odor, C 6 H 12 O 2 : used as a solvent for lacquers, dyes, cellulose nitrate, and resins.
- dialect geography — linguistic geography
- dialectologically — In terms of dialectology.
- diaphragmatically — By use of the diaphragm; in a diaphragmatic way.
- diatonic semitone — the pitch difference between certain adjacent degrees of the diatonic scale
- diaz del castillo — Bernal [ber-nahl] /bɛrˈnɑl/ (Show IPA), 1492–1581, Spanish soldier-historian of the conquest of Mexico.
- dicarboxylic acid — any carboxylic acid that contains two carboxyl groups per molecule
- dictating machine — a device that records spoken words, as on audiocassettes, for playing back later to prepare a transcript
- dictionary attack — an attempt to hack into a computer or network by submitting every word in a dictionary as a possible password
- dictionary-making — the work or activity of compiling dictionaries
- digital recording — a method of sound recording in which an input audio waveform is sampled at regular intervals, usually between 40,000 and 50,000 times per second, and each sample is assigned a numerical value, usually expressed in binary notation.
- diocletian window — a window in the form of a round-headed archway with a narrower compartment on either side, the side compartments usually being capped with entablatures on which the arch of the central compartment rests.
- diphenylacetylene — tolan.
- dipterocarpaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Dipterocarpaceae, a family of trees chiefly native to tropical SE Asia, having two-winged fruits. Many species yield useful timber and resins
- dirt track racing — motorcycle racing on a dirt track
- disability clause — a clause in a life-insurance policy providing for waiver of premium and sometimes payment of monthly income if the policyholder becomes totally and permanently disabled.
- disaster recovery — (business) (DR) Planning and implementation of procedures and facilities for use when essential systems are not available for a period long enough to have a significant impact on the business, e.g. when the head office is blown up. Disasters include natural: fire, flood, lightning, hurricane; hardware: power failure, component failure, head crash; software failure: bugs, resources; vandalism: arson, bombing, cracking, theft; data corruption or loss: human error, media failure; communications: computer network equipment, network storm, telephones; security: passwords compromised, computer virus; legal: change in legislation; personnel: unavailability of essential staff, industrial action. Companies need to plan for disaster: before: risk analysis, preventive measures, training; during: how should staff and systems respond; after: recovery measures, post mortem analysis. Hardware can usually be replaced and is usually insured. Software and data needs to be backed up off site. Alternative communication systems should be arranged in case of network failure or inaccessible premises, e.g. emergency telephone number, home working, alternative data center.
- discomgoogolation — a feeling of anxiety felt by someone who is unable to access the internet
- discreditableness — Quality of being discreditable.
- discrete variable — a variable that may assume only a countable, and usually finite, number of values.
- disidentification — The act of disidentifying, or rejecting a personal or group identity.
- displacement hull — a hull that displaces a significant volume of water when under way.
- disposable income — the part of a person's income remaining after deducting personal income taxes.
- disqualifications — Plural form of disqualification.
- disrespectability — Lack of respectability.
- disruptive action — action performed by protestors, workers, etc that causes the disruption of a service
- dissociated press — [Play on "Associated Press"; perhaps inspired by a reference in the 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon "What's Up, Doc?"] An algorithm for transforming any text into potentially humorous garbage even more efficiently than by passing it through a marketroid. The algorithm starts by printing any N consecutive words (or letters) in the text. Then at every step it searches for any random occurrence in the original text of the last N words (or letters) already printed and then prints the next word or letter. Emacs has a handy command for this. Here is a short example of word-based Dissociated Press applied to an earlier version of the Jargon File: wart: A small, crocky feature that sticks out of an array (C has no checks for this). This is relatively benign and easy to spot if the phrase is bent so as to be not worth paying attention to the medium in question. Here is a short example of letter-based Dissociated Press applied to the same source: window sysIWYG: A bit was named aften /bee't*/ prefer to use the other guy's re, especially in every cast a chuckle on neithout getting into useful informash speech makes removing a featuring a move or usage actual abstractionsidered interj. Indeed spectace logic or problem! A hackish idle pastime is to apply letter-based Dissociated Press to a random body of text and vgrep the output in hopes of finding an interesting new word. (In the preceding example, "window sysIWYG" and "informash" show some promise.) Iterated applications of Dissociated Press usually yield better results. Similar techniques called "travesty generators" have been employed with considerable satirical effect to the utterances of Usenet flamers; see pseudo.
- distance learning — education in which students receive instruction over the Internet, from a video, etc., instead of going to school.