17-letter words containing a, t, h, e, l, d
- drive up the wall — to cause to become crazy or furious
- dull as dishwater — water in which dishes are, or have been, washed.
- dutch elm disease — a disease of elms characterized by wilting, yellowing, and falling of the leaves and caused by a fungus, Ceratostomella ulmi, transmitted by bark beetles.
- eat flaming death — (humour, abuse) A construction popularised among hackers by the infamous CPU Wars comic; supposedly derive from a famously turgid line in a WWII-era anti-Nazi propaganda comic that ran "Eat flaming death, non-Aryan mongrels!" or something of the sort (however, it is also reported that the Firesign Theater's 1975 album "In The Next World, You're On Your Own" included the phrase "Eat flaming death, fascist media pigs"; this may have been an influence). Used in humorously overblown expressions of hostility. "Eat flaming death, EBCDIC users!"
- ethinyloestradiol — Alternative form of ethinylestradiol.
- exception handler — Special code which is called when an exception occurs during the execution of a program. If the programmer does not provide a handler for a given exception, a built-in system exception handler will usually be called resulting in abortion of the program run and some kind of error indication being returned to the user. Examples of exception handler mechanisms are Unix's signal calls and Lisp's catch and throw.
- exceptional child — a gifted child
- fear and loathing — (Hunter S. Thompson) A state inspired by the prospect of dealing with certain real-world systems and standards that are totally brain-damaged but ubiquitous - Intel 8086s, COBOL, EBCDIC, or any IBM machine except the Rios (also known as the RS/6000).
- follow the leader — a child's game in which players, one behind the other, follow a leader and must repeat or follow everything he or she does.
- for all the world — the earth or globe, considered as a planet.
- garden heliotrope — the common valerian, Valeriana officinalis, especially when cultivated as an ornamental.
- generalized other — an individual's internalized impression of societal norms and expectations.
- good-time charlie — an affable, sociable, pleasure-loving man.
- grandfather clock — a pendulum floor clock having a case as tall as or taller than a person; tall-case clock; long-case clock.
- grandmother clock — a pendulum clock similar to a grandfather's clock but shorter.
- greenland halibut — a flatfish, Reinhardtius hippoglossoides, similar and related to the halibut
- ground angle shot — a photograph or film shot in which the lens is near the ground, usually pointing up somewhat
- hairy-tailed mole — a blackish North American mole, Parascalops breweri, having a short, hairy tail.
- haitian solenodon — a rare shrewlike nocturnal mammal of the Caribbean, Solenodon paradoxus, having a long hairless tail and an elongated snout: family Solenodontidae, order Insectivora (insectivores)
- half-breadth plan — a diagrammatic plan of one half of the hull of a vessel divided lengthwise amidships, showing water lines, stations, diagonals, and bow and buttock lines.
- hardware platform — a group of compatible computers that can run the same software.
- henry cabot lodge — Henry Cabot, 1850–1924, U.S. public servant and author: senator 1893–1924.
- heterochlamydeous — (of a plant) having a perianth consisting of distinct sepals and petals
- hillel foundation — a national organization, founded in 1924 by the B'nai B'rith, that institutes and administers programs designed to enrich the religious, cultural, and social life of Jewish college students.
- historical method — the process of establishing general facts and principles through attention to chronology and to the evolution or historical course of what is being studied.
- hit the headlines — be prominently featured in the news
- hold all the aces — If you say that someone holds all the aces, you mean that they have all the advantages in a contest or situation.
- hold one's breath — If you say that someone is holding their breath, you mean that they are waiting anxiously or excitedly for something to happen.
- holding operation — a plan or procedure devised to prolong the existing situation
- homeland security — national defence
- how the land lies — the prevailing conditions or state of affairs
- hydroelectrically — Using hydroelectric power.
- hydrotherapy pool — a pool of water used for hydrotherapy
- hydrothermal vent — an opening on the floor of the sea from which hot, mineral-rich solutions issue. Compare vent1 (def 2).
- indecipherability — Quality of being indecipherable.
- indistinguishable — not distinguishable.
- integrated school — (in New Zealand) a private or church school that has joined the state school system
- interdental brush — a small brush that is used to clean between the teeth
- interrupt handler — (software) A routine which is executed when an interrupt occurs. Interrupt handlers typically deal with low-level events in the hardware of a computer system such as a character arriving at a serial port or a tick of a real-time clock. Special care is required when writing an interrupt handler to ensure that either the interrupt which triggered the handler's execution is masked out (inhibitted) until the handler exits, or the handler is re-entrant so that multiple concurrent invocations will not interfere with each other. If interrupts are masked then the handler must execute as quickly as possible so that important events are not missed. This is often arranged by splitting the processing associated with the event into "upper" and "lower" halves. The lower part is the interrupt handler which masks out further interrupts as required, checks that the appropriate event has occurred (this may be necessary if several events share the same interrupt), services the interrupt, e.g. by reading a character from a UART and writing it to a queue, and re-enabling interrupts. The upper half executes as part of a user process. It waits until the interrupt handler has run. Normally the operating system is responsible for reactivating a process which is waiting for some low-level event. It detects this by a shared flag or by inspecting a shared queue or by some other synchronisation mechanism. It is important that the upper and lower halves do not interfere if an interrupt occurs during the execution of upper half code. This is usually ensured by disabling interrupts during critical sections of code such as removing a character from a queue.
- island of the sun — Sicily: the island where Helius kept his oxen.
- italian greyhound — one of an Italian breed of toy dogs resembling a greyhound.
- lady of the house — the female head of a household (usually preceded by the).
- lady of the night — a tropical American shrub, Brunfelsia americana, of the nightshade family, having berrylike yellow fruit and fragrant white flowers.
- lady-of-the-night — a tropical American shrub, Brunfelsia americana, of the nightshade family, having berrylike yellow fruit and fragrant white flowers.
- lagrange's method — a procedure for finding maximum and minimum values of a function of several variables when the variables are restricted by additional conditions.
- lake of the woods — Eldrick [el-drik] /ˈɛl drɪk/ (Show IPA), ("Tiger") born 1975, U.S. professional golfer.
- lanthanide series — the series of rare-earth elements of atomic numbers 57 through 71 (lanthanum through lutetium).
- le morte d'arthur — a compilation and translation of French Arthurian romances by Sir Thomas Malory, printed by Caxton in 1485.
- lead to the altar — to marry
- life and/or death — If you say that something is a matter of life and death, you are emphasizing that it is extremely important, often because someone may die or suffer great harm if people do not act immediately.