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19-letter words containing a, c, d

  • deflate compression — deflate
  • dendrochronological — Pertaining to dendrochronology.
  • dental receptionist — a receptionist working in a dental surgery
  • department chairman — the chairman of a university department
  • depletion allowance — a tax allowance granted in certain industries, such as the oil and gas industries, to compensate for the depletion of the oil, gas, etc owned by the company
  • descriptive grammar — an approach to grammar that is concerned with reporting the usage of native speakers without reference to proposed norms of correctness or advocacy of rules based on such norms.
  • detective constable — a police officer who investigates crime and who is of the lowest rank
  • developable surface — a surface that can be flattened onto a plane without stretching or compressing any part of it, as a circular cone.
  • development company — a company that buys land and builds houses, offices, shops, or factories on it, or buys existing buildings and makes them more modern
  • devil's coach-horse — a large black rove beetle, Ocypus olens, with large jaws and ferocious habits
  • devils-on-horseback — a savoury of prunes wrapped in bacon slices and served on toast
  • diamond ring effect — a phenomenon, sometimes observed immediately before and after a total eclipse of the sun, in which one of Baily's beads is much brighter than the others, resembling a diamond ring around the moon.
  • dictionary of names — a dictionary of given names that indicates whether a name is usually male, female, or unisex and often includes origins as well as meanings; for example, as by indicating that Evangeline, meaning “good news,” comes from Greek. Used primarily as an aid in selecting a name for a baby, dictionaries of names may also include lists of famous people who have shared a name and information about its current popularity ranking.
  • dielectric constant — Electricity. the ratio of the flux density produced by an electric field in a given dielectric to the flux density produced by that field in a vacuum.
  • difference equation — (mathematics)   A relation between consecutive elements of a sequence. The first difference is D u(n) = u(n+1) - u(n) where u(n) is the nth element of sequence u. The second difference is u(n+2) + a u(n+1) + b u(n) = 0 can be converted to a difference equation (in this case, a second order linear difference equation): D2 u(n) + p D u(n) + q u(n) = 0 and vice versa. a, b, p, q are constants.
  • differential backup — (operating system)   A kind of backup that copies all files that have changed since the last full backup. Each differential backup will include all files in previous differential backups since the full backup so to restore a version of a file, you only need to search the full backup and the relevant differential backup. Some systems support differential backup by associating an "Archive" flag with each file and setting this flag whenever the file is modified to indicate that it should be included in the next backup. A differential backup does not change this flag, whereas an incremental backup resets it.
  • diffraction grating — a band of equidistant, parallel lines, usually more than 5000 per inch (2000 per centimeter), ruled on a glass or polished metal surface for diffracting light to produce optical spectra.
  • diffraction pattern — the phenomenon exhibited by wave fronts that, passing the edge of an opaque body, are modulated, thereby causing a redistribution of energy within the front: it is detectable in light waves by the presence of a pattern of closely spaced dark and light bands (diffraction pattern) at the edge of a shadow.
  • digital certificate — (communications, security)   An attachment to an electronic mail message used for security purposes, e.g. to verify that a user sending a message is who he or she claims to be, and to provide the receiver with the means to encode a reply. An individual wishing to send an encrypted message applies for a digital certificate from a certificate authority (CA). The CA issues an encrypted digital certificate containing the applicant's public key and a variety of other identification information. The CA makes its own public key readily available on the Internet. The recipient of an encrypted message uses the CA's public key to decode the digital certificate attached to the message, verifies it as issued by the CA and then obtains the sender's public key and identification information held within the certificate.
  • digital electronics — (electronics)   The implementation of two-valued logic using electronic logic gates such as and gates, or gates and flip-flops. In such circuits the logical values true and false are represented by two different voltages, e.g. 0V for false and +5V for true. Similarly, numbers are normally represented in binary using two different voltages to represented zero and one. Digital electronics contrasts with analogue electronics which represents continuously varying quantities like sound pressure using continuously varying voltages. Digital electronics is the foundation of modern computers and digital communications. Massively complex digital logic circuits with millions of gates can now be built onto a single integrated circuit such as a microprocessor and these circuits can perform millions of operations per second.
  • diplomatic immunity — exemption from taxation, searches, arrest, etc., enjoyed by diplomatic officials and their dependent families under international law, and usually on a reciprocal basis.
  • direct grant school — (in Britain, formerly) a school financed by endowment, fees, and a state grant conditional upon admittance of a percentage of nonpaying pupils nominated by the local education authority
  • direct mapped cache — (architecture)   A cache where the cache location for a given address is determined from the middle address bits. If the cache line size is 2^n then the bottom n address bits correspond to an offset within a cache entry. If the cache can hold 2^m entries then the next m address bits give the cache location. The remaining top address bits are stored as a "tag" along with the entry. In this scheme, there is no choice of which block to flush on a cache miss since there is only one place for any block to go. This simple scheme has the disadvantage that if the program alternately accesses different addresses which map to the same cache location then it will suffer a cache miss on every access to these locations. This kind of cache conflict is quite likely on a multi-processor. See also fully associative cache, set associative cache.
  • direction indicator — aerial used in wireless communication
  • directional coupler — (communications)   (tap) A passive device used in cable systems to divide and combine radio frequency signals. A directional coupler has at least three ports: line in, line out, and the tap. The signal passes between line in and line out ports with loss referred to as the insertion loss. A small portion of the signal power applied to the line in port passes to the tap port. A signal applied to the tap port is passed to the line in port less the tap attenuation value. The tap signals are isolated from the line out port to prevent reflections. A signal applied to the line out port passes to the line in port and is isolated from the tap port. Some devices provide more than one tap output line (multi-taps).
  • disaster capitalism — the practice (by a government, regime, etc) of taking advantage of a major disaster to adopt liberal economic policies that the population would be less likely to accept under normal circumstances
  • disciplinary action — punishment or caution
  • discretionary trust — a trust in which the beneficiaries' shares are not fixed in the trust deed but are left to the discretion of other persons, often the trustees
  • discriminated union — (theory)   The discriminated union of two sets A and B is A + B = {(inA, a) | a in A} U {(inB, b)| b in B} where inA and inB are arbitrary tags which specify which summand an element originates from. A type (especially an algebraic data type) might be described as a discriminated union if it is a sum type whose objects consist of a tag to say which part of the union they belong to and a value of the corresponding type.
  • disenfranchisements — Plural form of disenfranchisement.
  • dispatch department — the department of an organization responsible for the dispatch of orders
  • displaced homemaker — a woman recently divorced, separated, or widowed after many years as a homemaker.
  • displacement engine — any engine employing the rectilinear motion of one or more pistons in cylinders.
  • disseminated cancer — a cancerous tumour that has spread from the site of original growth to a secondary site
  • distance university — a degree-granting institution operating wholly or mainly by correspondence courses for students not resident on or within commuting distance of the campus.
  • distillation column — a type of still fitted with interior baffles, used for fractional distillation. Compare still2 (def 1).
  • distinctive feature — a feature of the sound system of a language that serves as the crucial distinguishing mark between two phonemes, as the distinctive feature of voicing, which distinguishes b from p in English, or nasality, which distinguishes m from b and p.
  • dobsonian telescope — a relatively inexpensive Newtonian telescope, suitable for visual but not photographic use, in which the tube assembly slips freely in the lower base.
  • domain architecture — (systems analysis)   A generic, organisational structure or design for software systems in a domain. The domain architecture contains the designs that are intended to satisfy requirements specified in the domain model. A domain architecture can be adapted to create designs for software systems within a domain and also provides a framework for configuring assets within individual software systems.
  • dominance hierarchy — a system or set of relationships in animal groups that is based on a hierarchical ranking, usually established and maintained by behavior in aggressive encounters: one or a few members hold the highest rank and the others are submissive to those ranking higher and dominant to those ranking lower.
  • double-helical gear — herringbone gear.
  • draw the color line — to impose or accept the color line
  • draw the curtain on — to end
  • drawing-room comedy — a light, sophisticated comedy typically set in a drawing room with characters drawn from polite society.
  • dry-bulk cargo ship — a ship that carries an unpackaged dry cargo such as coal or grain; bulk carrier
  • duplicating machine — a duplicator, especially one for making identical copies of documents, letters, etc.
  • dutchman's-breeches — a plant, Dicentra cucullaria, of the fumitory family, having long clusters of pale-yellow, two-spurred flowers.
  • dynamic positioning — Dynamic positioning is the use of computers to control the position of a semi-submersible rig.
  • dynamic translation — (architecture)   A virtual machine implementation approach, used to speed up execution of byte-code programs. To execute a program unit such as a method or a function, the virtual machine compiles its bytecodes into (hardware) machine code. The translated code is also placed in a cache, so that next time that unit's machine code can be executed immediately, without repeating the translation. This technique was pioneered by the commercial Smalltalk implementation currently known as VisualWorks, in the early 1980s. Currently it is also used by some implementations of the Java Virtual Machine under the name JIT (Just In Time compilation).
  • dynatron oscillator — type of oscillator
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