22-letter words containing a, d, i, t
- diachronic linguistics — historical linguistics.
- dicyclopentadienyliron — ferrocene (def 1).
- diethylbarbituric acid — barbital
- digital control system — (systems) (DCS) A digital computer used for real-time control of a dynamic system, usually in an industrial environment, possibly as part of a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. A DCS samples feedback from the system under control and modifies the control signals in an attempt to achieve some desired behaviour. Analysis of such digital-analogue feedback systems can involve mathematical methods such as difference equations, Laplace transforms, z transfer functions, state space models and state transition matrices.
- digital radio mondiale — (communications) (DRM) A form of monaural digital broadcast using carrier frequencies below 30 MHz. DRM uses MPEG-4 AAC Main Profile and SBR at data rates of 16-25 kbps.
- digital standard mumps — (DSM) DEC's version of MUMPS.
- digital versatile disc — (storage) (DVD, formerly "Digital Video Disc") An optical storage medium with improved capacity and bandwidth compared with the Compact Disc. DVD, like CD, was initally marketed for entertainment and later for computer users. [When was it first available?] A DVD can hold a full-length film with up to 133 minutes of high quality video, in MPEG-2 format, and audio. The first DVD drives for computers were read-only drives ("DVD-ROM"). These can store 4.7 GBytes - over seven times the storage capacity of CD-ROM. DVD-ROM drives read existing CD-ROMs and music CDs and are compatible with installed sound and video boards. Additionally, the DVD-ROM drive can read DVD films and modern computers can decode them in software in real-time. The DVD video standard was announced in November 1995. Matshusita did much of the early development but Philips made the first DVD player, which appeared in Japan in November 1996. In May 2004, Sony released the first dual-layer drive, which increased the disc capacity to 8.5 GB. Double-sided, dual-layer discs will eventually increase the capacity to 17 GB. Write-once DVD-R ("recordable") drives record a 3.9GB DVD-R disc that can be read on a DVD-ROM drive. Pioneer released the first DVD-R drive on 1997-09-29. By March 1997, Hitachi had released a rewritable DVD-RAM drive (by false analogy with random-access memory). DVD-RAM drives read and write to a 2.6 GB DVD-RAM disc, read and write-once to a 3.9GB DVD-R disc, and read a 4.7 GB or 8.5 GB DVD-ROM. Later, DVD-RAM discs could be read on DVD-R and DVD-ROM drives.
- digital video recorder — See DVR.
- dilation and curettage — a surgical method for the removal of diseased tissue or an early embryo from the lining of the uterus by means of scraping.
- directed acyclic graph — (DAG) A directed graph containing no cycles. This means that if there is a route from node A to node B then there is no way back.
- directional derivative — the limit, as a function of several variables moving along a given line from one specified point to another on the line, of the difference in the functional values at the two points divided by the distance between the points.
- directional microphone — a microphone that has a greater sensitivity to sounds coming from a particular area in front of it: used to eliminate unwanted sounds.
- director of admissions — a member of a university staff who is in overall charge of admissions to the university and its courses
- directory system agent — (DSA) The software that provides the X.500 Directory Service for a portion of the directory information base. Generally, each DSA is responsible for the directory information for a single organisation or organisational unit.
- disciplinary committee — a committee charged with examining alleged breaches of discipline within an organization, profession, etc and adjudicating on them
- disposable soma theory — the theory that ageing is caused by the body having increasingly fewer resources to allocate towards repairing wear and damage to tissues
- distributed generation — A distributed generation system involves a person or company generating some of their power requirements in different ways, such as locally, or using renewable energy, in order to avoid taking it all from the grid.
- distributive education — a special program of vocational education at the high-school level in which a student is employed part-time, receiving on-the-job training, and also attends classes, most of which pertain directly to the student's vocational field.
- dog's dinner/breakfast — You describe something as a dog's breakfast or dog's dinner in order to express your disapproval of it, for example because it is very untidy, badly organized, or badly done.
- dominant seventh chord — a chord consisting of the dominant and the major third, perfect fifth, and minor seventh above it. Its most natural resolution is to a chord on the tonic
- don't misunderstand me — You can say don't misunderstand me when you want to correct a wrong impression that you think someone may have got about what you are saying.
- double blackwall hitch — a kind of knot
- draft-quality printing — low-quality, high-speed output in printed form from a printer linked to a word processor
- dread high bit disease — (character) A condition endemic to PRIME (also known as "PR1ME") minicomputers that results in all the characters having their high bit (0x80, see meta bit) ON rather than OFF. This complicates transporting files to other systems and talking to true 8-bit devices. Folklore had it that PRIME adopted the convention in order to save 25 cents per serial line per machine; PRIME old-timers, on the other hand, claim they inherited the disease from Honeywell via customer NASA's compatibility requirements and struggled heroically to cure it. Whoever was responsible, this probably qualifies as one of the most cretinous design tradeoffs ever made. A few other machines have exhibited similar brain damage.
- drumhead court-martial — a court-martial held, usually on a battlefield, for the summary trial of charges of offenses committed during military operations.
- duplex high speed data — (DHSD) A term which describes a full-duplex channel that can carry 64 kilobits per second. This is the kind of service provided by an Inmarsat-B type portable earth station or a leased line (not ISDN).
- dyadic systems limited — Dyalog Limited
- earth inductor compass — a compass actuated by induction from the earth's magnetic field.
- educational psychology — a branch of psychology concerned with developing effective educational techniques and dealing with psychological problems in schools.
- educational technology — the use of technology, such as computers, within education, to aid the learning process
- educational television — television of informational or instructional content.
- enchanter's nightshade — any of several onagraceous plants of the genus Circaea, esp C. lutetiana, having small white flowers and bristly fruits
- end transmission block — (character) (ETB) The mnemonic for ASCII character 23.
- endotrophic mycorrhiza — the most widespread and common type of mycorrhiza, in which the fungus lives within the cells of the roots of the plant
- entertainment industry — show business
- equal rights amendment — a proposed amendment to the US Constitution enshrining equality between the sexes
- estimated maximum loss — Estimated maximum loss is the amount of risk that an underwriter estimates the insurer will be able to cover before ceding any surplus to a reinsurer.
- experimental condition — one of the distinct states of affairs or values of the independent variable for which the dependent variable is measured in order to carry out statistical tests or calculations
- extended affix grammar — (language, grammar) (EAG) A formalism for describing both the context free syntax and the context sensitive syntax of languages. EAGs belong to the family of two-level grammars. They are very closely related to two-level van Wijngaarden grammars. EAG can be used as a specification formalism, specifying in relations rather than functions, or as a relational programming language like PROLOG.
- far-infrared radiation — the longer wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation in the infrared region of the spectrum, beyond the red end of the visible spectrum, from 50 to 1000 micrometers. Abbreviation: FIR.
- federal district court — district court (def 2).
- federal maritime board — the body responsible for regulating commerce by US and international shipping in US waters
- fermi-dirac statistics — the branch of quantum statistics used to calculate the permitted energy arrangements of the particles in a system in terms of the exclusion principle
- financial underwriting — Financial underwriting is the process of assessing whether the proposed sum insured and product are reasonable when considering the possible financial loss to the client.
- fitzgerald contraction — the hypothesis that a moving body exhibits a contraction in the direction of motion when its velocity is close to the speed of light.
- fixed point combinator — (mathematics) (Y) The name used in combinatory logic for the fixed point function, also written as "fix".
- foot-and-mouth disease — an acute, contagious, febrile disease of cattle, hogs, sheep, and other hoofed animals, caused by any of various rhinoviruses and characterized by vesicular eruptions in the mouth and about the hoofs, teats, and udder.
- forth modification lab — (event) (FORML) A Forth conference held every November on the West coast of the USA ().
- gallamine triethiodide — a neuromuscular blocking drug, C 30 H 60 I 3 N 3 O 3 , similar to curare, used as a skeletal muscle relaxant in conjunction with surgical anesthesia.
- generalized coordinate — Usually, generalized coordinates. one of a minimum set of coordinates needed to specify the state or position of a given system.