18-letter words containing a, l, n, t, i, c
- debt consolidation — the process of taking out a new loan (often secured on one's property) in order to pay off a number of existing debts
- declaration of war — a formal statement made by one country to another that a state of war now exists between them
- decompartmentalize — to remove excessive compartmentalization from (an organization)
- diamondback turtle — any edible North American terrapin of the genus Malaclemys, esp M. terrapin, occurring in brackish and tidal waters and having diamond-shaped markings on the shell: family Emydidae
- dictionary catalog — a library catalog having all its entries, including authors, titles, subjects, etc., in one general alphabetical sequence.
- dielectric heating — the heating of a nonconducting substance caused by dielectric loss when the material is placed in a variable electric field.
- digital technology — the branch of scientific or engineering knowledge that deals with the creation and practical use of digital or computerized devices, methods, systems, etc.: advances in digital technology.
- directional signal — any of four signal lights on the front left, front right, rear left, and rear right of an automotive vehicle that, when actuated by the driver, flash in pairs on the side toward which a turn is to be made.
- distribution class — form class
- domestic appliance — a machine used for household tasks, for example, a washing machine, refrigerator, etc.
- double achievement — a representation of the arms of a husband beside those of his wife such that a difference of rank between them is shown.
- dragline excavator — a power shovel that operates by being dragged by cables at the end of an arm or jib: used for quarrying, opencast mining, etc
- dramatic monologue — a poetic form in which a single character, addressing a silent auditor at a critical moment, reveals himself or herself and the dramatic situation.
- drinking chocolate — sweetened cocoa powder
- dysfunctionalities — Plural form of dysfunctionality.
- ecma international — (body) (Formerly European Computer Manufacturers Association) An industry association founded in 1961 and dedicated to the standardisation of information and communication systems. ECMA edits standards and technical reports. All ECMA publications are available free of charge. The best known ECMA standard is ECMA 262, defining the scripting language ECMAScript.
- eleanor of castile — 1246–90, Spanish wife of Edward I of England. Eleanor Crosses were erected at each place at which her body rested between Nottingham, where she died, and London, where she is buried
- electric potential — the work required to transfer a unit positive electric charge from an infinite distance to a given point against an electric field
- electrocyclization — (organic chemistry) an electrocyclic reaction.
- electrodesiccation — The drying of tissue, and the prevention of bleeding, using a high-frequency electric current.
- electronic banking — the transfer of money between financial institutions through an exchange of electronic signals over a network
- electronic mailbox — a device used to store electronic mail
- electronic tagging — Electronic tagging is a system in which a criminal or suspected criminal has an electronic device attached to them which enables the police to know if they leave a particular area.
- electronic warfare — the military use of electronics to prevent or reduce an enemy's effective use and to protect friendly use of electromagnetic radiation equipment
- electroretinograms — Plural form of electroretinogram.
- electrostatic lens — an electron lens consisting of a system of metal electrodes, the electrostatic field of which focuses the charged particles
- electrostatic unit — any unit that belongs to a system of electrical cgs units in which the electric constant is given the value of unity and is taken as a pure number
- emotional literacy — the ability to deal with one's emotions and recognize their causes
- enantioselectivity — (chemistry) The selectivity of a reaction towards one of a pair of enantiomers.
- equinoctial circle — celestial equator
- equinoctial spring — either of the two highest spring tides that occur at the equinoxes
- equivalent circuit — an arrangement of simple electrical components that is electrically equivalent to a complex circuit and is used to simplify circuit analysis
- ethical investment — an investment in a company whose activities or products are not considered by the investor to be unethical
- ethnomusicological — Relating to or pertaining to ethnomusicology.
- ethnopsychological — Relating to ethnopsychology.
- fall-back position — an alternative plan
- fermat's principle — Optics. the law that the path taken by a ray of light in going from one point to another point will be the path that requires the least time.
- fettuccine alfredo — fettuccine in cream sauce with grated Parmesan cheese.
- fibrocartilaginous — a type of cartilage having a large number of fibers.
- fly in the face of — to move through the air using wings.
- functional disease — a disease in which there is an abnormal change in the function of an organ, but no structural alteration in the tissues involved (opposed to organic disease).
- functional program — (language) A program employing the functional programming approach or written in a functional language.
- functional testing — (testing) (Or "black-box testing", "closed-box testing") The application of test data derived from functional requirements without regard to how the system is implemented.
- galactic longitude — the angular distance in degrees measured eastward in the galactic plane from a radius drawn from the earth as center to the constellation Sagittarius.
- galilean telescope — a refracting telescope that forms an erect image, consisting of an objective of relatively long focal length that causes light rays to converge and an eyepiece of short focal length that causes them to diverge.
- garbage collection — (programming) (GC) The process by which dynamically allocated storage is reclaimed during the execution of a program. The term usually refers to automatic periodic storage reclamation by the garbage collector (part of the run-time system), as opposed to explicit code to free specific blocks of memory. Automatic garbage collection is usually triggered during memory allocation when the amount free memory falls below some threshold or after a certain number of allocations. Normal execution is suspended and the garbage collector is run. There are many variations on this basic scheme. Languages like Lisp represent expressions as graphs built from cells which contain pointers and data. These languages use automatic dynamic storage allocation to build expressions. During the evaluation of an expression it is necessary to reclaim space which is used by subexpressions but which is no longer pointed to by anything. This reclaimed memory is returned to the free memory pool for subsequent reallocation. Without garbage collection the program's memory requirements would increase monotonically throughout execution, possibly exceeding system limits on virtual memory size. The three main methods are mark-sweep garbage collection, reference counting and copying garbage collection. See also the AI koan about garbage collection.
- gene amplification — an increase in the frequency of replication of a DNA segment.
- genetic algorithms — genetic algorithm
- goya (y lucientes) — Fran‧ˈcis‧co Jo‧ˈsé‧ de (fʀɑnˈθiskɔhɔˈsɛ ðɛ) ; fränt hēsˈk^ōh^ōseˈ the) 1746-1828; Sp. painter
- graduated cylinder — a narrow, cylindrical container marked with horizontal lines to represent units of measurement and used to precisely measure the volume of liquids.