21-letter words containing a, d, l, i
- direct inward dialing — (communications) (DID) A service offered by telephone companies which allows the last 3 or 4 digits of a phone number to be transmitted to the destination exchange. For example, a company could have 10 incoming lines, all with the number 234 000. If a caller dials 234 697, the call is sent to 234 000 (the company's exchange), and the digits 697 are transmitted. The company's exchange then routes the call to extension 697. This gives the impression of 1000 direct dial lines, whereas in fact there are only 10. Obviously, only 10 at a time can be used. This system is also used by fax servers. Instead of an exchange at the end of the 234 000 line, a computer running fax server software and fax modem cards uses the last three digits to identify the recipient of the fax. This allows 1000 people to have their own individual fax numbers, even though there is only one 'fax machine'.
- disestablishmentarian — a person who favors the separation of church and state, especially the withdrawal of special rights, status, and support granted an established church by a state; an advocate of disestablishing a state church.
- displacement activity — a behavior performed out of its usual context and apparently irrelevant to the prevailing situation, as eating when an unknown individual approaches, tending to occur when appropiate behaviors, as attacking or fleeing, are in conflict or obstructed.
- display advertisement — an advertisement designed to attract attention by using devices such as conspicuous or elegant typefaces, graphics, etc
- distant early warning — a US radar detection system to warn of missile attack
- distributed smalltalk — ["The Design and Implementation of Distributed Smalltalk", J. Bennett, SIGPLAN Notices 22(12):318-330 (Dec 1980)].
- double predestination — the doctrine that God has foreordained both those who will be saved and those who will be damned.
- double spanish burton — a tackle having one standing block and two running blocks, giving a mechanical advantage of five, neglecting friction.
- drop in someone's lap — give someone the responsibility of
- dumfries and galloway — a region in S Scotland. 2460 sq. mi. (6371 sq. km).
- dynamic drive overlay — (storage, software) (DDO) Software to allow a system BIOS that does not support Logical Block Addressing to access drives larger than 528 MB. The alternatives are to update the system BIOS or install an EIDE controller card with a suitable on-board BIOS.
- eastern daylight time — a time zone applicable to many eastern areas of the United States during the summer months, being a daylight-saving variant of Eastern Standard Time
- eccles-jordan circuit — flip-flop
- educational sociology — the application of sociological principles and methods to the solution of problems in an educational system.
- electric displacement — the electric flux density when an electric field exists in free space into which a dielectric is introduced
- electromagnetic field — a field of force associated with a moving electric charge equivalent to an electric field and a magnetic field at right angles to each other and to the direction of propagation
- empire state building — New York City skyscraper
- endoplasmic reticulum — an extensive intracellular membrane system whose functions include synthesis and transport of lipids and, in regions where ribosomes are attached, of proteins
- enhanced oil recovery — any of several techniques that make it possible to recover more oil than can be obtained by natural pressure, such as the injection of fluid or gases into an oilfield to force more oil to the surface
- enharmonic modulation — a change of key achieved by regarding a note in one key as an equivalent note in another. Thus E flat in the key of A flat could be regarded as D sharp in the key of B major
- environmental studies — a university course studying the environment and related issues
- epidemic encephalitis — any type of widespread encephalitis caused by various viruses
- epidermolysis bullosa — type of genetic skin disorder
- extensible vax editor — (text, tool) (EVE) A DEC product implemented using DEC's Text Processing Utility (TPU).
- faculty board meeting — a meeting of the governing body of a faculty
- faisal ibn abdul aziz — 1905–75, king of Saudi Arabia (1964–75)
- ferric sodium oxalate — an emerald-green, crystalline, extremely water-soluble salt, used in photography and blueprinting.
- financial times index — one of the indexes of share prices produced by the Financial Times, especially the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index
- financial underwriter — A financial underwriter is an insurance employee working in financial underwriting.
- first-dollar coverage — insurance that provides payment for the full loss up to the insured amount with no deductibles.
- flat-coated retriever — one of an English breed of large sporting dogs having a flat, dense, shiny black or liver-colored coat, small ears, and long jaws, used for retrieving game from both water and land.
- fluorophosphoric acid — any of three acids containing fluorine and phosphorus, HPF 6 , HPO 2 F 2 , or H 2 PO 3 F.
- forward compatibility — (jargon) The ability to accept input from later versions of itself. Forward compatibility is harder to achieve than backward compatibility, since, in the backward case, the input format is know whereas a forward compatible system needs to cope gracefully with unknown future features. An example of future compatibility is the stipulation that a web browser should ignore HTML tags it does not recognise. See also extensible.
- fraudulent conversion — conversion committed with the intent to defraud
- frederick william iii — 1770–1840, king of Prussia 1797–1840.
- free alongside vessel — (of a shipment of goods) delivered to the dock without charge to the buyer, but excluding the cost of loading onto the vessel
- full faith and credit — the obligation under Article IV of the U.S. Constitution for each state to recognize the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state.
- fuming sulphuric acid — a mixture of pyrosulphuric acid, H2S2O7, and other condensed acids, made by dissolving sulphur trioxide in concentrated sulphuric acid
- functional dependency — (database) Given a relation R (in a relational database), attribute Y of R is functionally dependent on attribute X of R and X of R functionally determines Y of R (in symbols R.X -> R.Y) if and only if each X in R has associated with it precisely one Y in R (at any one time). Attributes X and Y may be composite. This is very close to a function in the mathematical sense.
- garbageabetical order — (humour) 1. The result of using an insertion sort to merge data into an unsorted list. 2. The state of any file or list that is supposed to be sorted, but is not.
- gas analysis recorder — A gas analysis recorder is a device which samples, records, and analyses gas.
- gideons international — an interdenominational lay society organized in 1899 to place Bibles in hotel rooms.
- gold bullion standard — a gold standard in which gold is not coined but may be purchased at a fixed price for foreign exchange.
- greater sunda islands — a group of islands in the W Malay Archipelago, forming the larger part of the Sunda Islands: consists of Borneo, Sumatra, Java, and Sulawesi
- guaranteed scheduling — (algorithm) A scheduling algorithm used in multitasking operating systems that guarantees fairness by monitoring the amount of CPU time spent by each user and allocating resources accordingly.
- hierarchical database — (database) A kind of database management system that links records together like a family tree such that each record type has only one owner, e.g. an order is owned by only one customer. Hierarchical structures were widely used in the first mainframe database management systems. However, due to their restrictions, they often cannot be used to relate structures that exist in the real world.
- hildegard (of bingen) — Saint(1098-1179); Ger. nun, composer, & mystic: her day is Sept. 17
- hindu-arabic numerals — Arabic numeral.
- host command facility — (operating system) (HCF) Used to access IBM S/36 and AS/400 computers from a mainframe.
- hydraulic accumulator — an apparatus in which gas, usually air, is used as a cushion or shock absorber in a hydraulic system.