17-letter words containing c, a, e, n, o
- daphnis and chloe — two lovers in pastoral literature, esp in a prose idyll attributed to the Greek writer Longus
- dark-complexioned — (of a person) having a dark complexion
- de facto standard — A widespread consensus on a particular product or protocol which has not been ratified by any official standards body, such as ISO, but which nevertheless has a large market share. The archetypal example of a de facto standard is the IBM PC which, despite is many glaring technical deficiencies, has gained such a large share of the personal computer market that it is now popular simply because it is popular and therefore enjoys fierce competition in pricing and software development.
- de-baathification — the process of removing the members and influence of the Ba'ath Party from public office in Iraq following the US-led invasion of 2003
- de-specialization — the act of specializing, or pursuing a particular line of study or work: Medical students with high student loans often feel driven into specialization.
- decellularization — (biology, medicine) The loss of cells from tissue.
- decontextualizing — to remove (a linguistic element, an action, etc.) from a context: decontextualized works of art displayed in museums.
- decriminalisation — (chiefly, British) Alternative form of decriminalization.
- decriminalization — to eliminate criminal penalties for or remove legal restrictions against: to decriminalize marijuana.
- dehistoricization — The process or result of dehistoricizing.
- dehydrochlorinase — an enzyme that catalyzes the removal of hydrogen and chlorine atoms or ions from chlorinated hydrocarbons.
- dehydrochlorinate — to remove hydrogen chloride or chlorine and hydrogen from (a substance).
- delay instruction — delayed control-transfer
- denatured alcohol — ethanol rendered unfit for human consumption by the addition of a noxious substance, as in methylated spirits
- dendroarchaeology — (archaeology) the science that uses dendrochronology to date wooden material from archaeological sites.
- dendroclimatology — The science that uses dendrochronology to reconstruct historical climate conditions.
- denial of service — a deliberate interruption in access to a computer system or network, esp by using multiple computers to generate an unmanageable volume of traffic (distributed denial of service)
- denial-of-service — pertaining to or being an incident in which a computer or computer network is disabled, disrupting access or service: a website hit by a denial-of-service attack; unintentional denial-of-service problems.
- deoxyribonuclease — DNase.
- dephlogisticating — Present participle of dephlogisticate.
- despotic monarchy — absolute monarchy.
- desynchronisation — (British spelling) Alternative form of desynchronization.
- desynchronization — to cause to indicate the same time, as one timepiece with another: Synchronize your watches.
- deucalion's flood — a flood sent by Zeus that wiped out the entire population of the earth, except for Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha
- diacetone alcohol — a colorless, flammable liquid with a pleasant odor, C 6 H 12 O 2 : used as a solvent for lacquers, dyes, cellulose nitrate, and resins.
- diatonic semitone — the pitch difference between certain adjacent degrees of the diatonic scale
- digital recording — a method of sound recording in which an input audio waveform is sampled at regular intervals, usually between 40,000 and 50,000 times per second, and each sample is assigned a numerical value, usually expressed in binary notation.
- diocletian window — a window in the form of a round-headed archway with a narrower compartment on either side, the side compartments usually being capped with entablatures on which the arch of the central compartment rests.
- disidentification — The act of disidentifying, or rejecting a personal or group identity.
- disposable income — the part of a person's income remaining after deducting personal income taxes.
- disruptive action — action performed by protestors, workers, etc that causes the disruption of a service
- district attorney — an officer who acts as attorney for the people or government within a specified district.
- doberman pinscher — one of a German breed of medium-sized, short-haired dogs having a black, brown, or blue coat with rusty brown markings.
- document examiner — (hypertext, tool) A high-performance hypertext system by Symbolics that provides on-line access to their user documentation.
- dollars-and-cents — considered strictly in terms of money: from a dollars-and-cents viewpoint.
- double refraction — the separation of a ray of light into two unequally refracted, plane-polarized rays of orthogonal polarizations, occurring in crystals in which the velocity of light rays is not the same in all directions.
- double track line — a railway line with double track
- drained of colour — colourless
- dynamic execution — (processor) A combination of techniques - multiple branch prediction, data flow analysis and speculative execution. Intel implemented Dynamic Execution in the P6 after analysing the execution of billions of lines of code.
- early closing day — a day on which most shops in a town or area close after lunch
- echo cancellation — A process which removes unwanted echoes from the signal on a telephone line. Echoes are usually caused by impedance mismatches along an analogue line.
- echoencephalogram — a graphic record produced by an echoencephalograph.
- economic blockade — an embargo on trade with a country, esp one which prohibits receipt of exports from that country, with the intention of disrupting the country's economy
- ectopic pregnancy — the development of a fertilized ovum outside the uterus, as in a Fallopian tube.
- education contact — (job) The person at a company who should receive educational material.
- egg on one's face — embarrassment due to an obvious blunder
- ehelp corporation — (company) A vendor of Microsoft Windows application development tools such as RoboHELP and RoboDemo. EHelp were formerly (around 1997) Blue Sky Software. Address: 7777 Fay Avenue, Suite 201, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA. Telephone: +1-800-793-0364, +1 (619) 459 6365. Fax: +1 (619) 459 6366.
- elastic stockings — something made of elastic which you wear on your legs to aid circulation
- election campaign — efforts to promote party or candidate to voters
- electric constant — the permittivity of free space, which has the value 8.854 187 × 10–12 farad per metre