21-letter words containing d, a, c, t
- deprovincialization's — to make provincial in character.
- detoxification centre — a place that specializes in the treatment of alcoholism or drug addiction
- development education — an area of study that aims to give pupils an understanding of their involvement in world affairs
- devil's walking-stick — Hercules'-club (sense 1)
- devil's-walking-stick — Hercules-club (def 2).
- diapason normal pitch — a standard of pitch in which A above middle C is established at 435 vibrations per second.
- dictionary definition — the meaning of a word as given in a dictionary or dictionaries
- differential calculus — the branch of mathematics that deals with differentials and derivatives.
- digital videocassette — a videocassette containing magnetic tape used for high-fidelity digital recording or playback of video. Abbreviation: DVC.
- direct inward dialing — (communications) (DID) A service offered by telephone companies which allows the last 3 or 4 digits of a phone number to be transmitted to the destination exchange. For example, a company could have 10 incoming lines, all with the number 234 000. If a caller dials 234 697, the call is sent to 234 000 (the company's exchange), and the digits 697 are transmitted. The company's exchange then routes the call to extension 697. This gives the impression of 1000 direct dial lines, whereas in fact there are only 10. Obviously, only 10 at a time can be used. This system is also used by fax servers. Instead of an exchange at the end of the 234 000 line, a computer running fax server software and fax modem cards uses the last three digits to identify the recipient of the fax. This allows 1000 people to have their own individual fax numbers, even though there is only one 'fax machine'.
- discretionary account — an account in which the stockbroker is allowed complete control over the purchase and sale of securities on the customer's behalf.
- discriminant function — a linear function of measurements of different properties of an object or event that is used to assign the object or event to one population or another (discriminant analysis)
- displacement activity — a behavior performed out of its usual context and apparently irrelevant to the prevailing situation, as eating when an unknown individual approaches, tending to occur when appropiate behaviors, as attacking or fleeing, are in conflict or obstructed.
- dissociative disorder — a mental disorder, as multiple personality, characterized by sudden temporary alteration in consciousness, identity, or motor behavior.
- distinctiveness ratio — the ratio of the relative frequency of some event in a given sample to that in the general population or another relevant sample
- draft once reuse many — (jargon) (DORUM) Reusing parts of a document to produce parts of an entirely new document. The term normally refers to text documents but the practise is equally common in programming.
- drop the handkerchief — a children's game in which all the players but one stand in a circle facing inward, while that one player stealthily drops a handkerchief behind a player in the circle who must pursue and attempt to catch the one who dropped the handkerchief before the latter reaches the vacated place.
- dynamic data exchange — (language) (DDE, originally Dynamic Data Linking, DDL) A Microsoft Windows 3 hotlink protocol that allows application programs to communicate using a client-server model. Whenever the server (or "publisher") modifies part of a document which is being shared via DDE, one or more clients ("subscribers") are informed and include the modification in the copy of the data on which they are working.
- eccles-jordan circuit — flip-flop
- educational sociology — the application of sociological principles and methods to the solution of problems in an educational system.
- electric displacement — the electric flux density when an electric field exists in free space into which a dielectric is introduced
- electromagnetic field — a field of force associated with a moving electric charge equivalent to an electric field and a magnetic field at right angles to each other and to the direction of propagation
- endoplasmic reticulum — an extensive intracellular membrane system whose functions include synthesis and transport of lipids and, in regions where ribosomes are attached, of proteins
- enharmonic modulation — a change of key achieved by regarding a note in one key as an equivalent note in another. Thus E flat in the key of A flat could be regarded as D sharp in the key of B major
- epidemic encephalitis — any type of widespread encephalitis caused by various viruses
- extended architecture — (storage) (XA) A CD-ROM drive specification required by Green Book CD-ROM and White Book CD-ROM formats. Drives labelled "XA ready" may require a firmware upgrade.
- faculty board meeting — a meeting of the governing body of a faculty
- ferric sodium oxalate — an emerald-green, crystalline, extremely water-soluble salt, used in photography and blueprinting.
- financial times index — one of the indexes of share prices produced by the Financial Times, especially the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index
- financial underwriter — A financial underwriter is an insurance employee working in financial underwriting.
- first-dollar coverage — insurance that provides payment for the full loss up to the insured amount with no deductibles.
- first-round financing — First round financing is the first time a new company raises money from investors.
- flat-coated retriever — one of an English breed of large sporting dogs having a flat, dense, shiny black or liver-colored coat, small ears, and long jaws, used for retrieving game from both water and land.
- food conversion ratio — a ratio expressing the weight of food required to produce a unit gain in the live weight of an animal
- food standards agency — the full form of FDA
- forward compatibility — (jargon) The ability to accept input from later versions of itself. Forward compatibility is harder to achieve than backward compatibility, since, in the backward case, the input format is know whereas a forward compatible system needs to cope gracefully with unknown future features. An example of future compatibility is the stipulation that a web browser should ignore HTML tags it does not recognise. See also extensible.
- forward exchange rate — the exchange rate of a currency to be delivered at a later date
- fraudulent conversion — conversion committed with the intent to defraud
- french fried potatoes — a more formal name for chips
- full faith and credit — the obligation under Article IV of the U.S. Constitution for each state to recognize the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state.
- functional dependency — (database) Given a relation R (in a relational database), attribute Y of R is functionally dependent on attribute X of R and X of R functionally determines Y of R (in symbols R.X -> R.Y) if and only if each X in R has associated with it precisely one Y in R (at any one time). Attributes X and Y may be composite. This is very close to a function in the mathematical sense.
- fundamental frequency — the lowest frequency at which a medium will freely oscillate.
- game of cat and mouse — In a fight or contest, if one person plays cat and mouse, or a game of cat and mouse, with the other, the first person tries to confuse or deceive the second in order to defeat them.
- garbageabetical order — (humour) 1. The result of using an insertion sort to merge data into an unsorted list. 2. The state of any file or list that is supposed to be sorted, but is not.
- goldbach's conjecture — the conjecture that every even number greater than two is the sum of two prime numbers
- great victoria desert — a desert in SW central Australia. 125,000 sq. mi. (324,000 sq. km).
- ground-effect machine — ACV (def 2).
- guaranteed scheduling — (algorithm) A scheduling algorithm used in multitasking operating systems that guarantees fairness by monitoring the amount of CPU time spent by each user and allocating resources accordingly.
- have the inside track — If you say that someone has the inside track, you mean that they have an advantage, for example special knowledge about something.
- hierarchical database — (database) A kind of database management system that links records together like a family tree such that each record type has only one owner, e.g. an order is owned by only one customer. Hierarchical structures were widely used in the first mainframe database management systems. However, due to their restrictions, they often cannot be used to relate structures that exist in the real world.