15-letter words containing d, a, u, e
- audio recording — an electronic recording of sound
- auditor general — (in Canada) a federal official responsible for auditing government departments and making an annual report
- audubon society — a North American organization devoted to the conservancy of birds
- auf wiedersehen — goodbye, until we see each other again
- augmented roman — a writing system based on an expanded English alphabet, consisting of 43 characters representing different phonemes of spoken English, used for teaching beginners to read. Abbreviation: I.T.A., i.t.a.
- augmented sixth — an interval greater than a major sixth by a chromatic half step.
- autodestructive — likely to cause one's own destruction
- automatic drive — an automotive transmission requiring either very little or no manual shifting of gears.
- autoschediastic — offhand, with little forethought or preparation
- autotetraploidy — the generation of the tetraploid state, created by the fusing of two nuclei from the same species
- bad housekeeper — a person who is not an efficient and thrifty domestic manager
- balanced rudder — a rudder so designed that the center of water pressure on the forward face, when turned, lies about halfway along the length, minimizing the turning effort required.
- barium chloride — a poisonous compound, BaCl2, consisting of flat white crystals that are soluble in water: it is used to treat water, metals, leather, etc.
- barium peroxide — a gray-white powder, BaO2, used as a bleach and in making hydrogen peroxide
- basic autocoder — Early system on IBM 7070. Listed in CACM 2(5):16 (May 1959).
- basic education — (in India) education in which all teaching is correlated with the learning of a craft
- basidiomycetous — belonging or pertaining to the basidiomycetes.
- bearded vulture — lammergeier
- beast of burden — A beast of burden is an animal such as an ox or a donkey that is used for carrying or pulling things.
- beat the bounds — (formerly) to define the boundaries of a parish by making a procession around them and hitting the ground with rods
- black horehound — a hairy unpleasant-smelling chiefly Mediterranean plant, Ballota nigra, having clusters of purple flowers: family Lamiaceae (labiates)
- blockade runner — a person, ship etc that tries to carry goods through a blockade
- blockade-runner — a ship or person that passes through a blockade.
- blue cattle dog — an Australian breed of dog with a bluish coat, developed for herding cattle
- blue wood aster — a composite plant, Aster cordifolius, of North America, having heart-shaped leaves and pale-blue flowers.
- blue-eyed grass — any of various mainly North American iridaceous marsh plants of the genus Sisyrinchium that have grasslike leaves and small flat starlike blue flowers
- break the mould — If you say that someone breaks the mould, you mean that they do completely different things from what has been done before or from what is usually done.
- brunner's gland — any of the glands in the submucosal layer of the duodenum, secreting an alkaline fluid into the small intestine.
- brush discharge — a slightly luminous electrical discharge between points of high charge density when the charge density is insufficient to cause a spark or around sharp points on a highly charged conductor because of ionization of air molecules in their vicinity
- buffalo soldier — (formerly, especially among American Indians) a black soldier.
- building trades — the trades and professions concerned with the creation and finishing of buildings, such as carpenters, plasterers, masons, electricians, etc.
- bullnose header — bull header (def 1).
- bullnose-header — Also called bullnose header. a brick having one of the edges across its width rounded for laying as a header in a sill or the like.
- buried treasure — A surprising piece of code found in some program. While usually not wrong, it tends to vary from crufty to bletcherous, and has lain undiscovered only because it was functionally correct, however horrible it is. Used sarcastically, because what is found is anything *but* treasure. Buried treasure almost always needs to be dug up and removed. "I just found that the scheduler sorts its queue using bubble sort! Buried treasure!"
- butter spreader — a small knife with a wide, flat blade, as for spreading butter on bread or rolls.
- butter-and-eggs — any of various plants, such as toadflax, the flowers of which are of two shades of yellow
- buttress thread — a screw thread having one flank that is vertical while the other is inclined, and a flat top and bottom: used in machine tools and designed to withstand heavy thrust in one direction
- cabinet pudding — a steamed suet pudding containing dried fruit
- cache la poudre — a river in N Colorado, flowing N and E to the South Platte River. 126 miles (203 km) long.
- cadmium sulfate — a water-soluble compound, CdSO 4 , of colorless crystals, used as an antiseptic.
- cadmium sulfide — a toxic pigment, CdS, varying from lemon yellow (cadmium yellow) to yellowish orange (cadmium orange) and used in paints, photocells, semiconductors, etc.
- calcium carbide — a grey salt of calcium used in the production of acetylene (by its reaction with water) and calcium cyanamide. Formula: CaC2
- calcium cyanide — a white or grayish-black compound, Ca(CN) 2, used as an insecticide and rodent poison.
- calcium sulfide — a yellow to light-gray, slightly water-soluble powder, CaS, having the odor of rotten eggs when moist: used chiefly in the preparation of luminous paint, hydrogen sulfide, and as a depilatory in cosmetics.
- calculated risk — a chance of failure, the probability of which is estimated before some action is undertaken.
- cardinal number — A cardinal number is a number such as 1, 3, or 10 that tells you how many things there are in a group but not what order they are in. Compare ordinal number.
- cardinal virtue — anything considered to be an important or characteristic virtue: Tenacity is his cardinal virtue.
- cartesian doubt — willful suspension of all interpretations of experience that are not absolutely certain: used as a method of deriving, by elimination of such uncertainties, axioms upon which to base theories.
- castellated nut — a nut that has indentations similar to battlements
- casters-up mode — [IBM, probably from slang belly up] Yet another synonym for "broken" or "down". Usually connotes a major failure. A system (hardware or software) which is "down" may be already being restarted before the failure is noticed, whereas one which is "casters up" is usually a good excuse to take the rest of the day off (as long as you're not responsible for fixing it).