17-letter words containing c, e, l, a, d
- disability clause — a clause in a life-insurance policy providing for waiver of premium and sometimes payment of monthly income if the policyholder becomes totally and permanently disabled.
- discreditableness — Quality of being discreditable.
- discrete variable — a variable that may assume only a countable, and usually finite, number of values.
- displacement hull — a hull that displaces a significant volume of water when under way.
- disposable income — the part of a person's income remaining after deducting personal income taxes.
- disrespectability — Lack of respectability.
- distance learning — education in which students receive instruction over the Internet, from a video, etc., instead of going to school.
- 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
- duality principle — the principle that a mathematical duality exists under certain conditions.
- due course of law — the regular administration of the law, according to which no citizen may be denied his or her legal rights and all laws must conform to fundamental, accepted legal principles, as the right of the accused to confront his or her accusers.
- 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.
- dwarf huckleberry — tangleberry.
- dynamically typed — dynamic typing
- dynamics analyzer — (language) (DYANA) An early language specialised for vibrational and other dynamic physical systems.
- early closing day — a day on which most shops in a town or area close after lunch
- 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
- electric retarder — An electric retarder is an electromagnetic transmission brake that is only effective when a vehicle is moving.
- electricity board — a company which supplies electricity
- electrocardiogram — A record or display of a person’s heartbeat produced by electrocardiography.
- emergency landing — an occasion when a place is forced to land: for example, because of a mechanical fault, bad weather, terrorism, etc.
- epicycloidal gear — a gear of an epicyclic train
- epidemiologically — With regard to epidemiology.
- esprit d'escalier — clever repartee one thinks of too late
- 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
- fendalton tractor — a four-wheel drive recreational vehicle
- fiddleback spider — brown recluse spider.
- field sales force — a team of people selling a product or service in the field as opposed to over the telephone, etc
- financial adviser — A financial adviser is someone whose job it is to advise people about financial products and services.
- first-aid classes — classes which teach people how to give immediate medical help in an emergency
- flagrante delicto — Law. in the very act of committing the offense.
- foucault pendulum — a pendulum that demonstrates the rotation of the earth by exhibiting an apparent change in its plane of oscillation.
- fourfold purchase — a tackle that is composed of a rope passed through two fourfold blocks in such a way as to provide mechanical power in the ratio of 1 to 5 or 1 to 4, depending on whether hauling is done on the running or the standing block and without considering friction. Compare tackle (def 2).
- fractal dimension — (mathematics) A common type of fractal dimension is the Hausdorff-Besicovich Dimension, but there are several different ways of computing fractal dimension. Fractal dimension can be calculated by taking the limit of the quotient of the log change in object size and the log change in measurement scale, as the measurement scale approaches zero. The differences come in what is exactly meant by "object size" and what is meant by "measurement scale" and how to get an average number out of many different parts of a geometrical object. Fractal dimensions quantify the static *geometry* of an object. For example, consider a straight line. Now blow up the line by a factor of two. The line is now twice as long as before. Log 2 / Log 2 = 1, corresponding to dimension 1. Consider a square. Now blow up the square by a factor of two. The square is now 4 times as large as before (i.e. 4 original squares can be placed on the original square). Log 4 / log 2 = 2, corresponding to dimension 2 for the square. Consider a snowflake curve formed by repeatedly replacing ___ with _/\_, where each of the 4 new lines is 1/3 the length of the old line. Blowing up the snowflake curve by a factor of 3 results in a snowflake curve 4 times as large (one of the old snowflake curves can be placed on each of the 4 segments _/\_). Log 4 / log 3 = 1.261... Since the dimension 1.261 is larger than the dimension 1 of the lines making up the curve, the snowflake curve is a fractal. [sci.fractals FAQ].
- frederick william — 1795–1861, king of Prussia 1840–61 (brother of William I of Prussia).
- french somaliland — a former name of Djibouti (def 1).
- full load current — A full load current is the largest current that a motor or other device is designed to carry under particular conditions.
- galactic latitude — the angular distance from the galactic equator of a point on the celestial sphere.
- general discharge — a discharge from military service of a person who has served honorably but who has not met all the conditions of an honorable discharge.
- good-time charlie — an affable, sociable, pleasure-loving man.
- grand climacteric — Physiology. a period of decrease of reproductive capacity in men and women, culminating, in women, in the menopause.
- 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.
- greater celandine — celandine (def 1).
- greenland current — the ocean current flowing clockwise around S Greenland.
- grey-faced petrel — a dark-coloured New Zealand petrel, Pterodroma macroptera gouldi
- half-round chisel — a cold chisel with a semicircular cutting edge used for making narrow channels