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18-letter words containing a, d, s, u

  • consecrated ground — ground that has been made or declared sacred or holy, and is therefore suitable for Christian burial
  • considered harmful — (programming, humour)   A type of phrase based on the title of Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous note in the March 1968 Communications of the ACM, "Goto Statement Considered Harmful", which fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars. Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently harmful that it will (by policy) no longer print articles taking so assertive a position against a coding practice. In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and parodies bore titles of the form "X considered Y". The structured-programming wars eventually blew over with the realisation that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has remained as a persistent minor in-joke.
  • constitutionalized — Simple past tense and past participle of constitutionalize.
  • costume department — the department in a theatre or television company that is responsible for actors' costumes
  • couldn't care less — If you say that you couldn't care less about someone or something, you are emphasizing that you are not interested in them or worried about them. In American English, you can also say that you could care less, with the same meaning.
  • countryside agency — (in England) a government agency that promotes the conservation and enjoyment of the countryside and aims to stimulate employment in rural areas
  • crude oil desalter — A crude oil desalter is equipment which removes inorganic salts from crude oil, using chemical or electrostatic separation.
  • cultural diffusion — act of diffusing; state of being diffused.
  • cultural diversity — the cultural variety and cultural differences that exist in the world, a society, or an institution: Dying languages and urbanization are threats to cultural diversity.
  • custodial sentence — a sentence given by a court that involves a term of imprisonment
  • customs and excise — Customs and Excise is a British government department which is responsible for collecting taxes on imported and exported goods. Compare Customs Service.
  • cut-and-waste code — (humour, programming)   Code that someone found online (e.g. in a blog) and copied and pasted into a product. The result is usually a lot of wasted time trying to track down obscure bugs from code that may have made sense in the original context but not in the new one. Also known as blog-driven development.
  • dangerous offender — an offender who is deemed by a court of law to be likely to engage in further violent conduct, and who thus becomes eligible for an indefinite prison sentence
  • deductive database — (database)   A combination of a conventional database containing facts, a knowledge base containing rules, and an inference engine which allows the derivation of information implied by the facts and rules. Commonly, the knowledge base is expressed in a subset of first-order logic and either a SLDNF or Datalog inference engine is used.
  • defense calculator — IBM 701
  • deinstitutionalize — to discharge (a patient) as from a mental institution
  • delmarva peninsula — a peninsula of the northeast US, between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic
  • descriptive clause — a relative clause that describes or supplements but is not essential in establishing the identity of the antecedent and is usually set off by commas in English. In This year, which has been dry, is bad for crops the clause which has been dry is a nonrestrictive clause.
  • desiderius erasmus — Desiderius [des-i-deer-ee-uh s] /ˌdɛs ɪˈdɪər i əs/ (Show IPA), 1466?–1536, Dutch humanist, scholar, theologian, and writer.
  • destruct mechanism — a mechanism that causes the destruction of a rocket or missile when activated
  • devil's paintbrush — a perennial European hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum) with leafless flower stalks bearing a cluster of orange-red heads: now a common weed in N U.S. and Canada
  • dia de los muertos — Day of the Dead.
  • diabetes insipidus — a disorder of the pituitary gland causing excessive thirst and excretion of large quantities of dilute urine
  • diaminofluorescein — (organic compound) A fluorescein into which two amino groups have been substituted.
  • diatomaceous earth — an unconsolidated form of diatomite
  • dicalcium silicate — a component of cement, 2CaO⋅SiO 2 , also used to neutralize acid soils.
  • dietary supplement — a substance taken in addition to what you eat in order to promote health
  • digital humanities — (used with a singular verb) the study of literature, philosophy, etc., as facilitated by computer technology or digital media: Digital humanities uses data analysis to find patterns in large bodies of text. the set of methodologies used in such scholarship.
  • digital signatures — digital signature
  • diplomatic shuttle — a series of diplomatic visits to other states made by an official, such as an ambassador or envoy
  • discourse analysis — the study of the rules or patterns characterizing units of connected speech or writing longer than a sentence.
  • dishwashing liquid — Dishwashing liquid is a thick soapy liquid which you add to hot water to clean dirty dishes.
  • disodium phosphate — sodium phosphate (def 2).
  • dispatch documents — documents sent with a parcel, etc, detailing information such as contents, delivery address, etc
  • distance education — education in which students receive instruction over the Internet, from a video, etc., instead of going to school.
  • distinguishability — to mark off as different (often followed by from or by): He was distinguished from the other boys by his height.
  • distribution class — form class
  • distribution ratio — the ratio of concentrations of a solute distributed between two immiscible solvents in contact with each other, as iodine in water and chloroform
  • division of labour — a system of organizing the manufacture of an article in a series of separate specialized operations, each of which is carried out by a different worker or group of workers
  • double-page spread — two pages treated as one in a publication, with images or text extending across the binding
  • drainpipe trousers — trousers with very narrow legs
  • driver's education — high-school driving classes
  • due process of law — the administration of justice in accordance with established rules and principles
  • dwarf storage unit — (humour)   (DSU) An IBM term for a cupboard.
  • dysfunctionalities — Plural form of dysfunctionality.
  • east indian walnut — lebbek.
  • elementary student — primary school pupil
  • engelbart, douglas — Douglas Engelbart
  • established church — a Church that is officially recognized as a national institution, esp the Church of England
  • euclid's algorithm — (algorithm)   (Or "Euclidean Algorithm") An algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor (GCD) of two numbers. It relies on the identity gcd(a, b) = gcd(a-b, b) To find the GCD of two numbers by this algorithm, repeatedly replace the larger by subtracting the smaller from it until the two numbers are equal. E.g. 132, 168 -> 132, 36 -> 96, 36 -> 60, 36 -> 24, 36 -> 24, 12 -> 12, 12 so the GCD of 132 and 168 is 12. This algorithm requires only subtraction and comparison operations but can take a number of steps proportional to the difference between the initial numbers (e.g. gcd(1, 1001) will take 1000 steps).
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