18-letter words containing a, s, v
- conversation piece — something, esp an unusual object, that provokes conversation
- conversationalists — Plural form of conversationalist.
- cultural diversity — the cultural variety and cultural differences that exist in the world, a society, or an institution: Dying languages and urbanization are threats to cultural diversity.
- cultural universal — a cultural pattern extant in every known society.
- cumulative scoring — a method of scoring in which the score of a partnership is taken as the sum of their scores on all hands played.
- curvature of space — (in relativity) a property of space near massive bodies in which their gravitational field causes light to travel along curved paths.
- daytime television — television broadcasts that are shown during the daytime rather than in the evening
- deductive database — (database) A combination of a conventional database containing facts, a knowledge base containing rules, and an inference engine which allows the derivation of information implied by the facts and rules. Commonly, the knowledge base is expressed in a subset of first-order logic and either a SLDNF or Datalog inference engine is used.
- delmarva peninsula — a peninsula of the northeast US, between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic
- descriptive clause — a relative clause that describes or supplements but is not essential in establishing the identity of the antecedent and is usually set off by commas in English. In This year, which has been dry, is bad for crops the clause which has been dry is a nonrestrictive clause.
- detective sergeant — a police officer who investigates crime and who ranks above a detective constable but below a detective inspector
- devil's paintbrush — a perennial European hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum) with leafless flower stalks bearing a cluster of orange-red heads: now a common weed in N U.S. and Canada
- digital switchover — the process of changing the method of transmitting television from analogue to digital format
- digital television — a television broadcasting technology in which signals are transmitted as a sequence of binary numbers.
- digital video disc — Digital Versatile Disc
- diplomatic service — diplomatic corps
- distracted driving — driving a vehicle while engaging in an activity that has the potential to distract the driver from the task of driving: Bans on cell phone use in cars will help to reduce the dangers of distracted driving.
- divine inspiration — insight provided by higher power
- division algorithm — the theorem that an integer can be written as the sum of the product of two integers, one a given positive integer, added to a positive integer smaller than the given positive integer. Compare Euclidean algorithm.
- division of labour — a system of organizing the manufacture of an article in a series of separate specialized operations, each of which is carried out by a different worker or group of workers
- domain name server — (spelling) Domain Name System.
- driver's education — high-school driving classes
- eclipsing variable — a variable star whose changes in brightness are caused by periodic eclipses of two stars in a binary system.
- enantioselectivity — (chemistry) The selectivity of a reaction towards one of a pair of enantiomers.
- epstein-barr virus — a virus belonging to the herpes family that causes infectious mononucleosis; it is also implicated in the development of Burkitt's lymphoma and Hodgkin's disease
- ethical investment — an investment in a company whose activities or products are not considered by the investor to be unethical
- evapotranspiration — The process by which water is transferred from the land to the atmosphere by evaporation from the soil and other surfaces and by transpiration from plants.
- evolution strategy — (ES) A kind of evolutionary algorithm where individuals (potential solutions) are encoded by a set of real-valued "object variables" (the individual's "genome"). For each object variable an individual also has a "strategy variable" which determines the degree of mutation to be applied to the corresponding object variable. The strategy variables also mutate, allowing the rate of mutation of the object variables to vary. An ES is characterised by the population size, the number of offspring produced in each generation and whether the new population is selected from parents and offspring or only from the offspring. ES were invented in 1963 by Ingo Rechenberg, Hans-Paul Schwefel at the Technical University of Berlin (TUB) while searching for the optimal shapes of bodies in a flow.
- exhaustive testing — (programming) Executing a program with all possible combinations of inputs or values for program variables.
- financial services — A company or organization that provides financial services is able to help you do things such as make investments or buy a pension or mortgage.
- fischer von erlach — Johann Bernhard [yaw-hahn bern-hahrt] /ˈyɔ hɑn ˈbɛrn hɑrt/ (Show IPA), 1656–1723, Austrian architect.
- for heaven's sake! — a mild exclamation of surprise, annoyance, etc.
- fuel-saving device — a device that increases the fuel efficiency of a vehicle, so that it uses less fuel for a further distance
- galvanic corrosion — Galvanic corrosion is a type of corrosion caused by bringing together two different metals, one of which corrodes more rapidly than it would alone while the other corrodes less rapidly.
- geneva conventions — one of a series of international agreements, first made in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1864, establishing rules for the humane treatment of prisoners of war and of the sick, the wounded, and the dead in battle.
- give a person five — to greet or congratulate someone by slapping raised hands
- give one's hand on — the terminal, prehensile part of the upper limb in humans and other primates, consisting of the wrist, metacarpal area, fingers, and thumb.
- give sb their head — If you give someone their head, you allow them to do what they want to do, without trying to advise or stop them.
- give someone a row — to scold someone; tell someone off
- give someone pause — to make someone hesitant or uncertain
- grand traverse bay — an inlet of Lake Michigan on the NW of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan.
- gravitational lens — a heavy, dense body, as a galaxy, that lies along our line of sight to a more distant object, as a quasar, and whose gravitational field refracts the light of that object, splitting it into multiple images as seen from the earth.
- gravitational mass — the mass of a body as measured by its gravitational attraction for other bodies.
- gravity escapement — an escapement, used especially in large outdoor clocks, in which the impulse is given to the pendulum by means of a weight falling through a certain distance.
- gulf saint vincent — a shallow inlet of SE South Australia, to the east of the Yorke Peninsula: salt industry
- gulliver's travels — a social and political satire (1726) by Jonathan Swift, narrating the voyages of Lemuel Gulliver to four imaginary regions: Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the land of the Houyhnhnms.
- have a hand in sth — If you have a hand in something such as an event or activity, you are involved in it.
- have a screw loose — a metal fastener having a tapered shank with a helical thread, and topped with a slotted head, driven into wood or the like by rotating, especially by means of a screwdriver.
- have a slate loose — to be eccentric or crazy
- have eyes only for — the organ of sight, in vertebrates typically one of a pair of spherical bodies contained in an orbit of the skull and in humans appearing externally as a dense, white, curved membrane, or sclera, surrounding a circular, colored portion, or iris, that is covered by a clear, curved membrane, or cornea, and in the center of which is an opening, or pupil, through which light passes to the retina.