17-letter words containing a, s, t, r, d
- delay instruction — delayed control-transfer
- dematerialisation — The act or process of dematerializing.
- demonstrativeness — The state or quality of being demonstrative.
- depersonalisation — Alternative spelling of depersonalization.
- depersonalization — the act or an instance of depersonalizing
- dephosphorylation — the removal of a phosphate group from an organic compound, as in the changing of ATP to ADP.
- designated driver — The designated driver in a group of people travelling together is the one who has agreed to drive, or who is insured to drive.
- designated hitter — In baseball, a designated hitter is a player who bats in place of the pitcher.
- despotic monarchy — absolute monarchy.
- dessert chocolate — cooking chocolate
- destination store — A destination store draws customers by selling unusual items, or having a friendly atmosphere, special pricing, and other desirable characteristics.
- desynchronisation — (British spelling) Alternative form of desynchronization.
- desynchronization — to cause to indicate the same time, as one timepiece with another: Synchronize your watches.
- deterministically — the doctrine that all facts and events exemplify natural laws.
- diaphragm shutter — a camera shutter having a group of overlapping blades that open and close at the center when exposing film.
- digital dashboard — (software) A personalised desktop portal that focuses on business intelligence and knowledge management.
- digital signature — an encrypted digital code appended to an electronic document to verify that it was created by a known source and has not been altered.
- dipterocarpaceous — of, relating to, or belonging to the Dipterocarpaceae, a family of trees chiefly native to tropical SE Asia, having two-winged fruits. Many species yield useful timber and resins
- disaster planning — disaster recovery
- disaster recovery — (business) (DR) Planning and implementation of procedures and facilities for use when essential systems are not available for a period long enough to have a significant impact on the business, e.g. when the head office is blown up. Disasters include natural: fire, flood, lightning, hurricane; hardware: power failure, component failure, head crash; software failure: bugs, resources; vandalism: arson, bombing, cracking, theft; data corruption or loss: human error, media failure; communications: computer network equipment, network storm, telephones; security: passwords compromised, computer virus; legal: change in legislation; personnel: unavailability of essential staff, industrial action. Companies need to plan for disaster: before: risk analysis, preventive measures, training; during: how should staff and systems respond; after: recovery measures, post mortem analysis. Hardware can usually be replaced and is usually insured. Software and data needs to be backed up off site. Alternative communication systems should be arranged in case of network failure or inaccessible premises, e.g. emergency telephone number, home working, alternative data center.
- discreditableness — Quality of being discreditable.
- discrete variable — a variable that may assume only a countable, and usually finite, number of values.
- disintermediation — the act of removing funds from savings banks and placing them into short-term investments on which the interest-rate yields are higher.
- display standards — display standard
- disproportionally — not in proportion; disproportionate.
- disproportionates — Third-person singular simple present indicative form of disproportionate.
- disrespectability — Lack of respectability.
- disruptive action — action performed by protestors, workers, etc that causes the disruption of a service
- dissipation trail — a clear rift left behind an aircraft flying through a thin cloud layer.
- 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.
- dissolve in tears — weep
- distance learning — education in which students receive instruction over the Internet, from a video, etc., instead of going to school.
- distillers' grain — a by-product of the distillation process for making whisky, used as an animal foodstuff
- district attorney — an officer who acts as attorney for the people or government within a specified district.
- dollars-and-cents — considered strictly in terms of money: from a dollars-and-cents viewpoint.
- doorstep salesman — a door-to-door salesman
- douglas engelbart — (person) Douglas C. Engelbart, the inventor of the mouse. On 1968-12-09, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California, USA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the on live system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The presentation was a session in the of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1000 computer professionals. This was the public debut of the computer mouse, hypertext, object addressing, dynamic file linking and shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface. The original 90-minute video: Hyperlinks, Mouse, Web-board.
- douglas macarthur — Douglas, 1880–1964, U.S. general: supreme commander of allied forces in SW Pacific during World War II and of UN forces in Korea 1950–51.
- dramatis personae — (used with a plural verb) the characters in a play.
- dressed up as sth — portrayed as
- ductus arteriosis — a fetal blood vessel that connects the left pulmonary artery directly to the descending aorta, normally closing after birth.
- dull as dishwater — water in which dishes are, or have been, washed.
- east grand rapids — a town in W central Michigan, near Grand Rapids.
- eastern orthodoxy — the faith, practice, membership, and government of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
- eastern red cedar — red cedar (def 1).
- eastern tradition — any of the philosophies and teachings that derive from Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and other spiritual traditions of the East
- eastern-red-cedar — Also called eastern red cedar, savin. an American, coniferous tree, Juniperus virginiana, yielding a fragrant, reddish wood used for making lead pencils, etc.
- ectoparasiticides — Plural form of ectoparasiticide.
- edgar watson howe — E(dgar) W(atson) 1853–1937, U.S. novelist and editor.
- emissions trading — the buying and selling of allowances for pollutant emissions