17-letter words containing a, d, o, r, t
- dollars-and-cents — considered strictly in terms of money: from a dollars-and-cents viewpoint.
- doorstep salesman — a door-to-door salesman
- double quatrefoil — a charge having the form of a foil with eight leaves, used especially as the cadency mark of a ninth son.
- double refraction — the separation of a ray of light into two unequally refracted, plane-polarized rays of orthogonal polarizations, occurring in crystals in which the velocity of light rays is not the same in all directions.
- double track line — a railway line with double track
- douglas engelbart — (person) Douglas C. Engelbart, the inventor of the mouse. On 1968-12-09, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California, USA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the on live system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The presentation was a session in the of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1000 computer professionals. This was the public debut of the computer mouse, hypertext, object addressing, dynamic file linking and shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface. The original 90-minute video: Hyperlinks, Mouse, Web-board.
- douglas macarthur — Douglas, 1880–1964, U.S. general: supreme commander of allied forces in SW Pacific during World War II and of UN forces in Korea 1950–51.
- downward mobility — movement from one social level to a higher one (upward mobility) or a lower one (downward mobility) as by changing jobs or marrying.
- dramatis personae — (used with a plural verb) the characters in a play.
- drawn-thread work — ornamental needlework done by drawing threads out of the fabric and using the remaining threads to form lacelike patterns
- drilling platform — a structure, either fixed to the sea bed or mobile, which supports the machinery and equipment (the drilling rig), together with the stores, required for digging an offshore oil well
- drinking fountain — a water fountain that ejects a jet of water for drinking without a cup.
- drive to the wall — to force into an awkward situation
- ductus arteriosis — a fetal blood vessel that connects the left pulmonary artery directly to the descending aorta, normally closing after birth.
- eastern orthodoxy — the faith, practice, membership, and government of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
- eastern tradition — any of the philosophies and teachings that derive from Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and other spiritual traditions of the East
- ectoparasiticides — Plural form of ectoparasiticide.
- edgar watson howe — E(dgar) W(atson) 1853–1937, U.S. novelist and editor.
- electricity board — a company which supplies electricity
- electrocardiogram — A record or display of a person’s heartbeat produced by electrocardiography.
- embroidery thread — a thread used for embroidery
- emissions trading — the buying and selling of allowances for pollutant emissions
- ends of the earth — remote regions
- enlarged prostate — disorder of male reproductive gland
- ethinyloestradiol — Alternative form of ethinylestradiol.
- european standard — a specification to be used as a consistent rule or guideline in the manufacture or selling of a certain product or service traded within Europe
- examination board — an organization that sets and corrects exams
- exception handler — Special code which is called when an exception occurs during the execution of a program. If the programmer does not provide a handler for a given exception, a built-in system exception handler will usually be called resulting in abortion of the program run and some kind of error indication being returned to the user. Examples of exception handler mechanisms are Unix's signal calls and Lisp's catch and throw.
- export department — the department of a business concerned with the export of the business's goods or services
- export-orientated — (of an industry, company, etc) mainly concerned with the export of goods or services
- extraordinariness — The property of being extraordinary.
- extraordinary ray — the plane-polarized ray of light that does not obey the laws of refraction in a doubly refracting crystal
- fade in (or out) — to appear or cause to appear (or disappear) gradually; make or become more (or less) distinct
- fairness doctrine — a policy mandated by the Federal Communications Commission, requiring radio and television stations to grant equal time to a political candidate, group, etc., to present an opposing viewpoint to one already aired.
- fear and loathing — (Hunter S. Thompson) A state inspired by the prospect of dealing with certain real-world systems and standards that are totally brain-damaged but ubiquitous - Intel 8086s, COBOL, EBCDIC, or any IBM machine except the Rios (also known as the RS/6000).
- fendalton tractor — a four-wheel drive recreational vehicle
- first commandment — “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”: first of the Ten Commandments.
- flagrante delicto — Law. in the very act of committing the offense.
- floating dry dock — a dock that floats and can be lowered in the water for the entrance of a ship, and then raised for use as a dry dock
- fluid lubrication — lubrication in which bearing surfaces are separated by an oil film sustained by the motion of the parts
- follow the leader — a child's game in which players, one behind the other, follow a leader and must repeat or follow everything he or she does.
- for all the world — the earth or globe, considered as a planet.
- fore-and-aft sail — any of various sails, as jib-headed sails, gaff sails, lugsails, lateen sails, spritsails, staysails, and jibs, that do not set on yards and whose normal position, when not trimmed, is in a fore-and-aft direction amidships.
- fort leonard wood — a military reservation and U.S. Army training center in SW Missouri, SW of Rolla.
- forward contracts — Forward contracts are agreements to buy something in the future for a price that has been agreed today.
- forward quotation — the price quoted on a forward delivery.
- foundation course — A foundation course is a course that you do at some colleges and universities in order to prepare yourself for a longer or more advanced course.
- fractal dimension — (mathematics) A common type of fractal dimension is the Hausdorff-Besicovich Dimension, but there are several different ways of computing fractal dimension. Fractal dimension can be calculated by taking the limit of the quotient of the log change in object size and the log change in measurement scale, as the measurement scale approaches zero. The differences come in what is exactly meant by "object size" and what is meant by "measurement scale" and how to get an average number out of many different parts of a geometrical object. Fractal dimensions quantify the static *geometry* of an object. For example, consider a straight line. Now blow up the line by a factor of two. The line is now twice as long as before. Log 2 / Log 2 = 1, corresponding to dimension 1. Consider a square. Now blow up the square by a factor of two. The square is now 4 times as large as before (i.e. 4 original squares can be placed on the original square). Log 4 / log 2 = 2, corresponding to dimension 2 for the square. Consider a snowflake curve formed by repeatedly replacing ___ with _/\_, where each of the 4 new lines is 1/3 the length of the old line. Blowing up the snowflake curve by a factor of 3 results in a snowflake curve 4 times as large (one of the old snowflake curves can be placed on each of the 4 segments _/\_). Log 4 / log 3 = 1.261... Since the dimension 1.261 is larger than the dimension 1 of the lines making up the curve, the snowflake curve is a fractal. [sci.fractals FAQ].
- frankenstein food — any foodstuff that has been genetically modified
- freight forwarder — a person or firm that arranges to pick up or deliver goods on instructions of a shipper or a consignee from or to a point by various necessary conveyances and common carriers.