16-letter words containing a, e, n, u
- disputatiousness — The state or quality of being disputatious or argumentative; contentiousness.
- 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
- document imaging — the process of converting paper documents into an electronic or digital format
- documentary film — factual, informative film
- double monastery — a religious community of both men and women who live in separate establishments under the same superior and who worship in a common church.
- double occupancy — a type of travel accommodation, as in a hotel, for two persons sharing the same room: The rate is $35 per person, double occupancy, or $65, single occupancy.
- double pneumonia — pneumonia affecting both lungs.
- double-breasting — the practice of employing nonunion workers, especially in a separate division, to supplement the work of higher-paid union workers.
- draw and quarter — to disembowel and dismember (a person) after hanging
- driver education — a course of study, as for high-school students, that teaches the techniques of driving a vehicle, along with basic vehicle maintenance, safety precautions, and traffic regulations and laws.
- dual citizenship — Also called dual nationality. the status of a person who is a legal citizen of two or more countries.
- dual personality — a disorder in which an individual possesses two dissociated personalities.
- ducks and drakes — Also, duck and drake. a pastime in which flat stones or shells are thrown across water so as to skip over the surface several times before sinking.
- dunderheadedness — Stupidity.
- duplessis-mornay — Philippe [fee-leep] /fiˈlip/ (Show IPA), Mornay, Philippe de.
- duplex apartment — an apartment with rooms on two connected floors.
- dutch guinea pig — a breed of two-tone short-haired guinea pig
- dutch new guinea — a former name of Irian Jaya.
- dynamic language — (language) (Dylan) A simple object-oriented Lisp dialect, most closely resembling CLOS and Scheme, developed by Advanced Technology Group East at Apple Computer. See also Marlais.
- eager evaluation — Any evaluation strategy where evaluation of some or all function arguments is started before their value is required. A typical example is call-by-value, where all arguments are passed evaluated. The opposite of eager evaluation is call-by-need where evaluation of an argument is only started when it is required. The term "speculative evaluation" is very close in meaning to eager evaluation but is applied mostly to parallel architectures whereas eager evaluation is used of both sequential and parallel evaluators. Eager evaluation does not specify exactly when argument evaluation takes place - it might be done fully speculatively (all redexes in the program reduced in parallel) or may be done by the caller just before the function is entered. The term "eager evaluation" was invented by Carl Hewitt and Henry Baker <[email protected]> and used in their paper ["The Incremental Garbage Collection of Processes", Sigplan Notices, Aug 1977. ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/hb/hbaker/Futures.html]. It was named after their "eager beaver" evaluator. See also conservative evaluation, lenient evaluation, strict evaluation.
- easter communion — the act of receiving communion in church on Easter Day - considered special because of the primacy of Easter among Christian festivals and because many people regard taking Easter communion as a basic token of membership of their church
- eastern european — relating to, situated in or coming from Eastern Europe
- educational park — a group of elementary and high schools, usually clustered in a parklike setting and having certain facilities shared by all grades, that often accommodates students from a large area.
- el camino bignum — (humour) /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ The road mundanely called El Camino Real, a road through the San Francisco peninsula that originally extended all the way down to Mexico City and many portions of which are still intact. Navigation on the San Francisco peninsula is usually done relative to El Camino Real, which defines logical north and south even though it isn't really north-south many places. El Camino Real runs right past Stanford University. The Spanish word "real" (which has two syllables: /ray-al'/) means "royal"; El Camino Real is "the royal road". In the Fortran language, a "real" quantity is a number typically precise to seven significant digits, and a "double precision" quantity is a larger floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen significant digits (other languages have similar "real" types). When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked what a long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on "real", he started calling it "El Camino Double Precision" - but when the hacker was told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it "El Camino Bignum", and that name has stuck. (See bignum).
- elburz mountains — a mountain range in N Iran, parallel to the SW and S shores of the Caspian Sea. Highest peak: Mount Demavend, 5671 m (18 606 ft)
- electric furnace — any furnace in which the heat is provided by an electric current
- electron capture — the transformation of an atomic nucleus in which an electron from the atom is spontaneously absorbed into the nucleus. A proton is changed into a neutron, thereby reducing the atomic number by 1. A neutrino is emitted. The process may be detected by the consequent emission of the characteristic X-rays of the resultant element
- elegiac quatrain — a poetic stanza consisting of four lines of iambic pentameter rhyming alternately.
- emotional labour — work that requires good interpersonal skills
- enriched uranium — uranium in which the proportion of the fissile isotope U-235 has been increased to make it more fissile
- enthusiastically — In an enthusiastic manner.
- equation of time — the difference between apparent solar time and mean solar time, being at a maximum in February (over 14 minutes) and November (over 16 minutes)
- equational logic — (logic) First-order equational logic consists of quantifier-free terms of ordinary first-order logic, with equality as the only predicate symbol. The model theory of this logic was developed into Universal algebra by Birkhoff et al. [Birkhoff, Gratzer, Cohn]. It was later made into a branch of category theory by Lawvere ("algebraic theories").
- equine influenza — a respiratory disease of horses, caused by the Orthomyxoviridae type A virus, characterized by a fever and persistent cough
- escutcheon plate — a plate or shield that surrounds a keyhole, door handle, light switch, etc, esp an ornamental one protecting a door or wall surface
- european council — an executive body of the European Union, made up of the President of the European Commission and representatives of the member states, including the foreign and other ministers. The Council acts at the request of the Commission
- evacuation route — An evacuation route is a way to get out of a building if there is an emergency, such as a fire.
- exchange student — sb who studies abroad
- exclusion clause — (in a contract) something that serves to limit liabilities
- exemption clause — a clause in a contract that exempts one party from liability for something
- exhaust analysis — An exhaust analysis is an examination of the constituents of an engine's gases, vapors, and particulates.
- exhaust manifold — An exhaust manifold is a heat-resistant tube that connects an engine to an exhaust pipe.
- exhumation order — a legal instruction to exhume a body
- extemporaneously — In an extemporaneous manner; without prior preparation or planning.
- external auditor — sb brought in to check financial records
- external student — a student studying a university subject extramurally
- facial neuralgia — paroxysmal darting pain and muscular twitching in the face, evoked by rubbing certain points of the face.
- fade-in fade-out — an optical effect in which a shot appears gradually out of darkness and then gradually disappears
- fashion business — the business dealing with style in clothes, cosmetics, behaviour, etc, esp the latest or most admired style