15-letter words containing a, s, r, i
- distractibility — inability to sustain one's attention or attentiveness, which is rapidly diverted from one topic to another: a symptom of a variety of mental disorders, as manic disorder, schizophrenia, or anxiety states.
- distress signal — a signal used, or designed to be used, by persons in peril, for the purpose of summoning aid, indicating their position, etc., as a radio code sign, aerial flare, flag hoist, or the like. Compare distress call (def 1).
- distressed area — a region so severely damaged by a flood, hurricane, or other natural catastrophe that its inhabitants need food, clothing, shelter, and economic aid from national charities or the federal government.
- distributor cap — the cap of an engine's distributor that holds in place the wires from the distributor to the sparking plugs
- disulfuric acid — pyrosulfuric acid
- diversification — the act or process of diversifying; state of being diversified.
- doctoral thesis — a thesis written as part of a doctorate
- domain squatter — (web) An unscrupulous person who registers a domain name in the hope of selling it to the rightful, expected owner at a profit. E.g. http://foldoc.com/.
- dorsibranchiate — having branchiae or gills along the back
- dorsiventrality — The quality of being dorsiventral.
- dorsoventrality — Zoology. pertaining to the dorsal and ventral aspects of the body; extending from the dorsal to the ventral side: the dorsoventral axis.
- double in brass — twice as large, heavy, strong, etc.; twofold in size, amount, number, extent, etc.: a double portion; a new house double the size of the old one.
- draughtsmanship — (British) alternative spelling of draftsmanship.
- dribs and drabs — small sporadic amounts
- dysmorphophobia — an obsessive fear that one's body, or any part of it, is repulsive or may become so
- dystrophication — the process by which a body of water becomes dystrophic.
- early admission — a plan for admission to colleges in the US, in which students apply to colleges earlier in the year than is customary and receive their results earlier too
- early christian — denoting or relating to the style of architecture that started in Italy in the 3rd century ad and spread through the Roman empire until the 5th century
- early saxifrage — an eastern North American plant, Saxifraga virginiensis, of the saxifrage family, having toothed basal leaves and branched clusters of small white flowers.
- east providence — a town in NE Rhode Island, near Providence.
- easter islander — a native or inhabitant of Easter Island
- eastern rumelia — an autonomous province in the Balkan peninsula, part of the Ottoman Empire, ceded in 1885 to Bulgaria
- eastern sudanic — a group of languages belonging to the Nilo-Saharan family, spoken in eastern and central Africa and including the Nilotic languages.
- eating disorder — any of various disorders, as anorexia nervosa or bulimia, characterized by severe disturbances in eating habits.
- echinodermatous — belonging or pertaining to the echinoderms.
- echocardiograms — Plural form of echocardiogram.
- eclaircissement — clarification; explanation.
- edriophthalmous — (of certain crustaceans) having stalkless eyes
- egyptian jasper — a type of jasper, generally with zones of colour, found in desert regions of Egypt
- elastic rebound — a theory of earthquakes that envisages gradual deformation of the fault zone without fault slippage until friction is overcome, when the fault suddenly slips to produce the earthquake
- electric shaver — razor powered by electricity
- electroanalysis — (physics, chemistry) Any of several electrochemical forms of analysis.
- electrodialyses — Plural form of electrodialysis.
- electrodialysis — Dialysis in which the movement of ions is aided by an electric field applied across the semipermeable membrane.
- electrodynamics — The branch of mechanics concerned with the interaction of electric currents with magnetic fields or with other electric currents.
- electrosurgical — Relating to electrosurgery.
- enantiomorphism — (chemistry) The relationship exhibited by a pair of enantiomorphs.
- enantiomorphous — Of or pertaining to enantiomorphs or enantiomorphism; enantiomorphic.
- enfranchisement — The act of enfranchising.
- english sparrow — a small Eurasian weaverbird, Passer domesticus, now established in North America and Australia. It has a brown streaked plumage with grey underparts
- english speaker — a person who speaks English as a first, or second mother tongue
- enterohepatitis — dual inflammation of the intestine and liver
- enteropeptidase — Enterokinase.
- epsilon squared — (jargon) A quantity even smaller than epsilon, as small in comparison to epsilon as epsilon is to something normal; completely negligible. If you buy a supercomputer for a million dollars, the cost of the thousand-dollar terminal to go with it is epsilon, and the cost of the ten-dollar cable to connect them is epsilon squared. Compare lost in the underflow, lost in the noise.
- equalitarianism — Egalitarianism.
- eric conspiracy — (person, humour) A shadowy group of moustachioed hackers named Eric first pinpointed as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous talk.bizarre posting ca. 1986. This was doubtless influenced by the numerous "Eric" jokes in the Monty Python oeuvre. There do indeed seem to be considerably more moustachioed Erics in hackerdom than the frequency of these three traits can account for unless they are correlated in some arcane way. Well-known examples include Eric Allman (of the "Allman style" described under indent style), Erik Fair (co-author of NNTP), Eric S. Raymond and about fifteen others. The organisation line "Eric Conspiracy Secret Laboratories" now emanates regularly from more than one site.
- eric s. raymond — (person) One of the authors of the Hacker's Jargon File. Eric was involved in the JOLT project and GNU Emacs as well as maintaining several FAQ lists. He is a keen advocate of open source. E-mail: <[email protected]>
- estuary english — a variety of standard British English in which the pronunciation reflects various features characteristic of London and the Southeast of England
- eta abstraction — eta conversion
- evening prayers — the daily evening service of Bible readings and prayers prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer