17-letter words containing d, e, a, c
- articulated joint — Anatomy. a flexible joint.
- articulated lorry — a lorry made in two separate sections, a tractor and a trailer, connected by a pivoted bar
- artificial kidney — a mechanical apparatus for performing haemodialysis
- artistic director — a person in charge of the artistic direction of a theatre company
- arunachal pradesh — a state in NE India, formed in 1986 from the former Union Territory. Capital: Itanagar. Pop: 1 091 117 (2001). Area: 83 743 sq km (32 648 sq miles)
- ascend the throne — to become king or queen
- ascertained goods — specific goods
- ashby-de-la-zouch — a town in central England, in Leicestershire: Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned (1569) in the castle. Pop: 11 409 (2001)
- assembly district — one of a fixed number of districts into which a state is divided, each district electing one member to the lower house of the state legislature.
- asset-backed fund — a fund in which the money is invested in property, shares, etc, rather than being deposited with a bank or building society
- associated states — Anguilla, Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts-Nevis, St Lucia, and St Vincent and the Grenadines, which had the status of associated statehood
- attendance centre — (in Britain) a place at which young offenders are required to attend regularly instead of going to prison
- attendance record — the record of how often a person has attended an institution such as a school
- audience research — research into the make-up and habits of the audience of a particular television or radio programme or network
- audio description — a facility provided for visually impaired people in which a film, television programme, or play is described through audio technology
- aurea mediocritas — the golden mean.
- automatic vending — selling goods by vending machines
- aviation medicine — the branch of medicine concerned with the effects on man of flight in the earth's atmosphere
- bachelor's degree — A bachelor's degree is a first degree awarded by universities.
- background report — a report on someone or something that sheds light on their background, esp a report on the background of a person convicted of a crime before they are sentenced by a judge
- bacteriorhodopsin — a purple protein containing retinal and found in the plasma membrane of certain bacteria (genus Halobacterium): it directly supplies electrochemical energy from sunlight
- bahia de cochinos — Spanish name of Bay of Pigs.
- balanced literacy — a method of teaching reading in which phonics and whole language approaches are both used to maximize student learning.
- balanced sentence — a sentence consisting of two or more clauses that are parallel in structure.
- bald-faced hornet — any large, stinging paper wasp of the family Vespidae, as Vespa crabro (giant hornet) introduced into the U.S. from Europe, or Vespula maculata (bald-faced hornet or white-faced hornet) of North America.
- barbed wire fence — a fence constructed from strong wire that has sharply pointed barbs at close intervals along its length
- barmecide (feast) — a pretended feast with no food
- barred woodpecker — a climbing bird, Picoides minor, of the family Picidae
- be black and blue — If you say that someone is black and blue, you mean that they are badly bruised.
- be running scared — If you say that a person or group is running scared, you mean that they are frightened of what someone might do to them or what might happen.
- beardmore glacier — one of the largest glaciers, in central Antarctica. About 125 miles (200 km) long.
- behind one's back — without one's knowledge; secretly or deceitfully
- bell-shaped curve — bell curve
- bergisch gladbach — city in W Germany, in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia: pop. 105,000
- bergisch-gladbach — an industrial city in W Germany, near Cologne.
- bermuda buttercup — a bulbous plant, Oxalis pescaprae, native to southern Africa, having nodding, yellow flowers.
- betagalactosidase — any of a family of enzymes capable of liberating galactose from carbohydrates.
- beyond comparison — outstanding, without equal
- biological shield — a protective shield impervious to radiation, esp the thick concrete wall surrounding the core of a nuclear reactor
- black-backed gull — either of two common black-and-white European coastal gulls, Larus fuscus (lesser black-backed gull) and L. marinus (great black-backed gull)
- black-headed gull — a small gull, Chroicocephalus ridibundus, that breeds in much of Europe and Asia, and often scavenges in towns
- black-tailed deer — a variety of mule deer, Odocoileus hemionus columbianus, of the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, having a tail that is black above.
- blackboard jungle — a school or school system characterized by lack of discipline and by juvenile delinquency.
- blackwells island — a former name of Roosevelt Island.
- blessed sacrament — the consecrated elements of the Eucharist
- blue dog democrat — a fiscally conservative member of the Democratic Party
- body center plate — one of a pair of plates that fit together and support the body of a car on a truck, while allowing the truck to rotate with respect to the body. One plate (body center plate) is attached to the underside of the car body and the other (truck center plate) is part of the car truck.
- book depreciation — Book depreciation is depreciation in a company's internal financial records that is different from the amount that is used for taxes.
- branch delay slot — delayed control-transfer
- branch prediction — (processor, algorithm) A technique used in some processors with instruction prefetch to guess whether a conditional branch will be taken or not and prefetch code from the appropriate location. When a branch instruction is executed, its address and that of the next instruction executed (the chosen destination of the branch) are stored in the Branch Target Buffer. This information is used to predict which way the instruction will branch the next time it is executed so that instruction prefetch can continue. When the prediction is correct (and it is over 90% of the time), executing a branch does not cause a pipeline break. Some later CPUs simply prefetch both paths instead of trying to predict which way the branch will go. An extension of the idea of branch prediction is speculative execution.