16-letter words containing a, d, u
- crash test dummy — a dummy used in crash tests
- cumberland sauce — a cold sauce made from orange and lemon juice, port, and redcurrant jelly, served with ham, game, or other meat
- curlew sandpiper — a common Eurasian sandpiper, Calidris ferruginea, having a brick-red breeding plumage and a greyish winter plumage
- currency trading — the business of trading in different currencies in order to profit from exchange rate differentials
- currier and ives — any of a 19th-cent. series of prints showing the manners, people, and events of the times
- cut a wide swath — to make an ostentatious display or forceful impression
- cut and blow-dry — a hairdressing procedure in which the customer's hair is cut and blow-dried
- dakin's solution — a dilute solution containing sodium hypochlorite and boric acid, used as an antiseptic in the treatment of wounds
- dandruff shampoo — a preparation of soap or detergent used to wash the hair and which helps to control and reduce dandruff
- data acquisition — data logging
- data warehousing — the use of large amounts of data taken from multiple sources to create reports and for data analysis
- david g farragut — David Glasgow, 1801–70, U.S. admiral: won the battles of New Orleans and Mobile Bay for the Union in the U.S. Civil War.
- davidson current — a winter countercurrent that flows N along the W coast of the U.S.
- deboursification — (jargon) Removal of irrelevant newsgroups from the Newsgroups header of a followup. The term applies particularly to the removal of frivolous groups added by one of the Kooks. See also: sneck.
- debut appearance — debut
- decimal currency — a system of currency in which the monetary units are parts or powers of ten
- decontextualized — removed from the usual context
- deferred annuity — an annuity that commences not less than one year after the final purchase premium
- dehumidification — Dehumidification is the removal of vapor from a gas-vapor mixture.
- deindustrialised — Simple past tense and past participle of deindustrialise.
- deindustrialized — Simple past tense and past participle of deindustrialize.
- demerara (sugar) — a coarse, light-brown sugar
- demolition squad — a group of demolishers
- demutualizations — Plural form of demutualization.
- denaturalization — The act or process of denaturalizing, of changing or destroying the quality (nature) of a thing.
- dental insurance — Dental insurance is insurance that pays for treatment by a dentist.
- denuclearization — The act or process of denuclearizing.
- departure lounge — In an airport, the departure lounge is the place where passengers wait before they get onto their plane.
- departure signal — a piece of equipment beside a railway which indicates to train drivers whether they should depart or not
- dependent clause — a clause that cannot function syntactically as a complete sentence by itself but has a nominal, adjectival, or adverbial function within a larger sentence; subordinate clause (Ex.: She will visit us if she can.)
- depleted uranium — Depleted uranium is a type of uranium that is used in some bombs.
- depressurization — to remove the air pressure from (a pressurized compartment of an aircraft or spacecraft).
- deputy secretary — the Deputy Secretary of State or Defense etc
- deuterocanonical — of or constituting a second or subsequent canon; specif., designating certain Biblical books accepted as canonical in the Roman Catholic Church, but held by Protestants to be apocryphal
- diazoamino group — the divalent group –N=NNH–.
- diesel-hydraulic — a locomotive driven by a diesel engine through hydraulic transmission and torque converters
- diethyltoluamide — a liquid, C 12 H 17 NO, used as an insect repellent and resin solvent.
- digital computer — a computer that processes information in digital form.
- dimethyl sulfate — a colorless or yellow, slightly water-soluble, poisonous liquid, (CH 3) 2 SO 2 , used chiefly in organic synthesis.
- dinosaurs mating — (humour) The activity said to occur when yet another big iron merger or buy-out occurs; reflects a perception by hackers that these signal another stage in the long, slow dying of the mainframe industry. Also described as "elephants mating": lots of noise and action at a high level, with an eventual outcome in the somewhat distant future. In its glory days of the 1960s, it was "IBM and the Seven Dwarves": Burroughs, Control Data, General Electric, Honeywell, NCR, RCA, and Univac. Early on, RCA sold out to Univac and GE also sold out, and it was "IBM and the BUNCH" (an acronym for Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell) for a while. Honeywell was bought out by Bull. Univac in turn merged with Sperry to form Sperry/Univac, which was later merged (although the employees of Sperry called it a hostile takeover) with Burroughs to form Unisys in 1986 (this was when the phrase "dinosaurs mating" was coined). In 1991 AT&T absorbed NCR, only to spit it out again in 1996. Unisys bought Convergent Technologies in 1988 and later others. More such earth-shaking unions of doomed giants seem inevitable.
- diplomatic pouch — a sealed mailbag containing diplomatic correspondence that is sent free of inspection between a foreign office and its diplomatic or consular post abroad or from one such post to another.
- discombobulating — Present participle of discombobulate.
- discombobulation — to confuse or disconcert; upset; frustrate: The speaker was completely discombobulated by the hecklers.
- discountenancing — Present participle of discountenance.
- discussion board — a website or section of a website that is used for public discussion of a specific topic and on which users can submit or read messages: You should post your questions on a parenting message board and get support from other parents.
- disequilibration — to put out of equilibrium; unbalance: A period of high inflation could disequilibrate the monetary system.
- disputatiousness — The state or quality of being disputatious or argumentative; contentiousness.
- disqualification — an act or instance of disqualifying.
- disreputableness — The state or quality of being disreputable or disgraceful; disreputability.
- distance modulus — a measure of the distance, r, of a celestial object too far away to show measurable parallax. It is given by m–M = 5 log(r/10), where m is its apparent magnitude (corrected for interstellar absorption) and M is its absolute magnitude