16-letter words containing a, d, e, r, s
- cumberland sauce — a cold sauce made from orange and lemon juice, port, and redcurrant jelly, served with ham, game, or other meat
- curlew sandpiper — a common Eurasian sandpiper, Calidris ferruginea, having a brick-red breeding plumage and a greyish winter plumage
- currier and ives — any of a 19th-cent. series of prints showing the manners, people, and events of the times
- dacryocystectomy — The surgical removal of a part of the lacrimal sac.
- dark-side hacker — (jargon, legal) A criminal or malicious hacker; a cracker. From George Lucas's Darth Vader, "seduced by the dark side of the Force". The implication that hackers form a sort of elite of technological Jedi Knights is intended. Opposite: samurai.
- darwin's finches — the finches of the subfamily Geospizinae of the Galapagos Islands, showing great variation in bill structure and feeding habits: provided Darwin with evidence to support his theory of evolution
- data compression — the act of compressing.
- data warehousing — the use of large amounts of data taken from multiple sources to create reports and for data analysis
- database manager — a person in charge of designing, maintaining, and controlling a database
- davidson current — a winter countercurrent that flows N along the W coast of the U.S.
- de broglie waves — the set of waves that represent the behaviour of an elementary particle, or some atoms and molecules, under certain conditions. The de Broglie wavelength, λ, is given by λ = h/mv, where h is the Planck constant, m the mass, and v the velocity of the particle
- de morgan's laws — (in formal logic and set theory) the principles that conjunction and disjunction, or union and intersection, are dual. Thus the negation of P & Q is equivalent to not-P or not-Q
- dead sea scrolls — a collection of manuscripts in Hebrew and Aramaic discovered in caves near the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956. They are widely held to have been written between about 100 bc and 68 ad and provide important biblical evidence
- dearborn heights — city in SE Mich.: suburb of Detroit: pop. 58,000
- deboursification — (jargon) Removal of irrelevant newsgroups from the Newsgroups header of a followup. The term applies particularly to the removal of frivolous groups added by one of the Kooks. See also: sneck.
- decentralisation — Alternative spelling of decentralization.
- dechristianizing — Present participle of dechristianize.
- degenerate state — a state of a system characterized by a set of quantum numbers and represented by an eigenfunction. The energy of each state is precise within the limits imposed by the uncertainty principle but may be changed by applying a field of force. States that have the same energy are called degenerate
- dehydroascorbate — (organic compound) Any salt or ester of dehydroascorbic acid.
- deindustrialised — Simple past tense and past participle of deindustrialise.
- deindustrialized — Simple past tense and past participle of deindustrialize.
- deliberativeness — The state or quality of being deliberative.
- delta conversion — delta reduction
- demerara (sugar) — a coarse, light-brown sugar
- demilitarisation — The removal of a military force, usually at the end of hostilities or as part of a treaty.
- demineralisation — Alternative spelling of demineralization.
- demoiselle crane — a gray crane, Anthropoides virgo, of northern Africa, Europe, and Asia, having long, white plumes behind each eye.
- demonstrableness — The quality of being demonstrable.
- dental insurance — Dental insurance is insurance that pays for treatment by a dentist.
- depart this life — to die
- department store — A department store is a large shop which sells many different kinds of goods.
- departmentalizes — Third-person singular simple present indicative form of departmentalize.
- departure signal — a piece of equipment beside a railway which indicates to train drivers whether they should depart or not
- depolymerisation — (chemistry) alternative spelling of depolymerization.
- depression glass — cheap glassware mass-produced during the Depression of the 1930s, usually molded in patterns in pale colors, and collectible since the early 1970s
- depressurization — to remove the air pressure from (a pressurized compartment of an aircraft or spacecraft).
- deputy secretary — the Deputy Secretary of State or Defense etc
- derbyshire chair — a chair of the mid-17th century, made of oak, usually without arms, and having a back of two carved rails between square uprights.
- destroying angel — a white slender very poisonous basidiomycetous toadstool, Amanita virosa, having a pronounced volva, frilled, shaggy stalk, and sickly smell
- determinableness — Capability of being determined; determinability.
- devil's triangle — Bermuda Triangle.
- devonshire cream — clotted cream.
- dew-point spread — the degrees of difference between the air temperature and the dew point
- diagonal process — a form of argument in which a new member of a set is constructed from a list of its known members by making the nth term of the new member differ from the nth term of the nth member. The new member is thus different from every member of the list
- diastereoisomers — Plural form of diastereoisomer.
- diesel-hydraulic — a locomotive driven by a diesel engine through hydraulic transmission and torque converters
- digital research — (company) The company which developed CP/M, the operating system used on many of the first generation 8-bit microprocessor-based personal computers. Digital Research also produced DR-DOS. Address: Santa Cruz, CA, USA.
- diphosphorylated — (biochemistry) phosphorylated with two units of phosphoric acid.
- direct-mail shot — the posting of unsolicited sales literature to potential customers' homes or business addresses
- director's chair — a lightweight folding armchair with transversely crossed legs and having a canvas seat and back panel, as traditionally used by motion-picture directors.