17-letter words containing a, e, d, i, c
- discrete variable — a variable that may assume only a countable, and usually finite, number of values.
- disidentification — The act of disidentifying, or rejecting a personal or group identity.
- displacement hull — a hull that displaces a significant volume of water when under way.
- disposable income — the part of a person's income remaining after deducting personal income taxes.
- disrespectability — Lack of respectability.
- disruptive action — action performed by protestors, workers, etc that causes the disruption of a service
- dissociated press — [Play on "Associated Press"; perhaps inspired by a reference in the 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon "What's Up, Doc?"] An algorithm for transforming any text into potentially humorous garbage even more efficiently than by passing it through a marketroid. The algorithm starts by printing any N consecutive words (or letters) in the text. Then at every step it searches for any random occurrence in the original text of the last N words (or letters) already printed and then prints the next word or letter. Emacs has a handy command for this. Here is a short example of word-based Dissociated Press applied to an earlier version of the Jargon File: wart: A small, crocky feature that sticks out of an array (C has no checks for this). This is relatively benign and easy to spot if the phrase is bent so as to be not worth paying attention to the medium in question. Here is a short example of letter-based Dissociated Press applied to the same source: window sysIWYG: A bit was named aften /bee't*/ prefer to use the other guy's re, especially in every cast a chuckle on neithout getting into useful informash speech makes removing a featuring a move or usage actual abstractionsidered interj. Indeed spectace logic or problem! A hackish idle pastime is to apply letter-based Dissociated Press to a random body of text and vgrep the output in hopes of finding an interesting new word. (In the preceding example, "window sysIWYG" and "informash" show some promise.) Iterated applications of Dissociated Press usually yield better results. Similar techniques called "travesty generators" have been employed with considerable satirical effect to the utterances of Usenet flamers; see pseudo.
- distance learning — education in which students receive instruction over the Internet, from a video, etc., instead of going to school.
- distance teaching — teaching via correspondence or the internet, where students are not physically present in a classroom
- district attorney — an officer who acts as attorney for the people or government within a specified district.
- doberman pinscher — one of a German breed of medium-sized, short-haired dogs having a black, brown, or blue coat with rusty brown markings.
- document examiner — (hypertext, tool) A high-performance hypertext system by Symbolics that provides on-line access to their user documentation.
- 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
- drained of colour — colourless
- duality principle — the principle that a mathematical duality exists under certain conditions.
- ductus arteriosis — a fetal blood vessel that connects the left pulmonary artery directly to the descending aorta, normally closing after birth.
- dutch east indies — a former name of the Republic of Indonesia.
- dutch elm disease — a disease of elms characterized by wilting, yellowing, and falling of the leaves and caused by a fungus, Ceratostomella ulmi, transmitted by bark beetles.
- dynamic execution — (processor) A combination of techniques - multiple branch prediction, data flow analysis and speculative execution. Intel implemented Dynamic Execution in the P6 after analysing the execution of billions of lines of code.
- dynamic insurance — Dynamic insurance is a type of insurance coverage where the policyholder can choose to increase benefits and premiums by a fixed percentage each year to offset the effects of inflation.
- dynamically typed — dynamic typing
- dynamics analyzer — (language) (DYANA) An early language specialised for vibrational and other dynamic physical systems.
- early closing day — a day on which most shops in a town or area close after lunch
- echocardiographer — A person who performs echocardiography.
- echocardiographic — Of or pertaining to echocardiography.
- economic blockade — an embargo on trade with a country, esp one which prohibits receipt of exports from that country, with the intention of disrupting the country's economy
- ectoparasiticides — Plural form of ectoparasiticide.
- education contact — (job) The person at a company who should receive educational material.
- electric retarder — An electric retarder is an electromagnetic transmission brake that is only effective when a vehicle is moving.
- electricity board — a company which supplies electricity
- electrocardiogram — A record or display of a person’s heartbeat produced by electrocardiography.
- emergency landing — an occasion when a place is forced to land: for example, because of a mechanical fault, bad weather, terrorism, etc.
- epicycloidal gear — a gear of an epicyclic train
- epidemiologically — With regard to epidemiology.
- escaping tendency — a property of a gas, related to its partial pressure, that expresses its tendency to escape or expand, given by d(log ef) = dμ/ RT, where μ is the chemical potential, R the gas constant, and T the thermodynamic temperature
- esprit d'escalier — clever repartee one thinks of too late
- 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.
- exceptional child — a gifted child
- facts and figures — details; precise information
- 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.
- fiddleback spider — brown recluse spider.
- field sales force — a team of people selling a product or service in the field as opposed to over the telephone, etc
- fifth commandment — “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee”: fifth of the Ten Commandments.
- financial adviser — A financial adviser is someone whose job it is to advise people about financial products and services.
- first commandment — “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”: first of the Ten Commandments.
- first-aid classes — classes which teach people how to give immediate medical help in an emergency
- flagrante delicto — Law. in the very act of committing the offense.
- 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].