20-letter words containing a, d, i, c, t
- flight data recorder — a recording device that records relevant data during an aircraft's flight
- for sb's delectation — If you do something for someone's delectation, you do it to give them enjoyment or pleasure.
- frequency modulation — FM.
- fulminating compound — a fulminate.
- fundamental particle — elementary particle.
- genetically modified — biologically altered
- guillaume de machaut — Guillaume de [French gee-yohm duh] /French giˈyoʊm də/ (Show IPA), Guillaume de Machaut.
- hard gelatin capsule — A hard gelatin capsule is a type of capsule that is usually used to contain medicine in the form of dry powder or very small pellets.
- harvard architecture — (architecture) A computer architecture in which program instructions are stored in different memory from data. Each type of memory is accessed via a separate bus, allowing instructions and data to be fetched in parallel. Contrast: von Neumann architecture.
- heat of condensation — the heat liberated by a unit mass of gas at its boiling point as it condenses to a liquid: equal to the heat of vaporization.
- heteropolysaccharide — (carbohydrate) any polysaccharide formed from two or more different kinds of monosaccharide.
- 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
- hit-and-run accident — a motor-vehicle accident in which the driver leaves the scene without stopping to give assistance, inform the police, etc
- horizontal microcode — (processor) Microcode using horizontal encoding.
- hydraulic fracturing — a process in which fractures in rocks below the earth's surface are opened and widened by injecting chemicals and liquids at high pressure: used especially to extract natural gas or oil.
- hydrostatic pressure — Hydrostatic pressure is the pressure exerted by a liquid that depends on how deep it is.
- 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 flagrante delicto — Law. in the very act of committing the offense.
- in the public domain — able to be discussed and examined freely by the general public
- in-service education — training and education given to employed teachers throughout their career
- 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
- independence of path — the property of a function for which the line integral has the same value along all curves between two specified points.
- indian cucumber root — a North American plant, Medeola virginiana, of the lily family, having whorled leaves, nodding, greenish-yellow flowers, and an edible root.
- indicated horsepower — the horsepower of a reciprocating engine as shown by an indicator record. Abbreviation: ihp, IHP.
- inductive statistics — the branch of statistics dealing with conclusions, generalizations, predictions, and estimations based on data from samples.
- industrial democracy — control of an organization by the people who work for it, esp by workers holding positions on its board of directors
- industrial insurance — industrial life insurance.
- industrial sociology — the sociological study of social relationships and social structures in business settings.
- intermediate section — The intermediate section is the section of the borehole after the top hole, which has more consolidated rock.
- international candle — candle (def 3b).
- into/in cold storage — If you put an idea or plan into cold storage or in cold storage, you delay it for a while rather than acting on it as you originally intended.
- justifiable homicide — murder committed under extenuating circumstances
- kill the fatted calf — the young of the domestic cow or other bovine animal.
- la canada-flintridge — a town in SW California.
- lafayette escadrille — a contingent of American aviators who in 1916 served as volunteers (Escadrille Américaine) in the French air force and in 1918 became the 103rd Pursuit Squadron of the U.S. Army.
- law of contradiction — the law that a proposition cannot be both true and false or that a thing cannot both have and not have a given property.
- lead with one's chin — to act so imprudently as to invite disaster
- lieutenant commander — a commissioned officer ranking next below a commander and next above a lieutenant.
- long island iced tea — a potent cocktail consisting of equal parts of, typically, five different distilled alcoholic liquors, usually vodka, gin, rum, tequila, and triple sec, with a small amount of mixer, usually cola
- longitude by account — the longitude of the position of a vessel as estimated by dead reckoning.
- longitudinal section — the representation of an object as it would appear if cut by the vertical plane passing through the longest axis of the object.
- macular degeneration — degeneration of the central portion of the retina, resulting in a loss of sharp vision.
- madwoman of chaillot — a satirical comedy (1945) by Jean Giraudoux.
- 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.