17-letter words containing d, e, t, a
- complementary dna — a form of DNA artificially synthesized from a messenger RNA template and used in genetic engineering to produce gene clones
- compound fracture — A compound fracture is a fracture in which the broken bone sticks through the skin.
- compound interval — an interval that is greater than an octave, as a ninth or a thirteenth.
- consolidated fund — a fund into which tax revenue is paid in order to meet standing charges, esp interest payments on the national debt
- consolidated laws — a body of laws collected together in a single codifying statute
- consumer advocate — consumerist (def 1).
- consumer watchdog — an organization or government agency that campaigns for consumers
- consumer-advocate — Also called consumer advocate. a person who is dedicated to protecting and promoting the welfare and rights of consumers.
- continental drift — Continental drift is the slow movement of the Earth's continents towards and away from each other.
- contradictoriness — asserting the contrary or opposite; contradicting; inconsistent; logically opposite: contradictory statements.
- contradistinctive — distinction by opposition or contrast: plants and animals in contradistinction to humans.
- coordinate clause — one of two or more clauses in a sentence having the same status and introduced by coordinating conjunctions
- coordinate system — a system of coordinates that uses numbers to represent a point, line, or the like.
- count one's beads — to pray with a rosary
- counterpropaganda — propaganda to offset or nullify unfriendly or enemy propaganda.
- credit facilities — a type of loan made by a bank
- credit memorandum — a memorandum issued to an account allowing a credit or reducing a debit, especially one posted to a customer's account.
- cut a good figure — to appear or behave well
- cut a person dead — to ignore a person completely
- cylinder capacity — the cylinder volume that is swept by the pistons of an internal-combustion engine
- dagestan republic — a constituent republic of S Russia, on the Caspian Sea: annexed from Persia in 1813; rich mineral resources. Capital: Makhachkala. Pop: 2 584 200 (2002). Area: 50 278 sq km (19 416 sq miles)
- damage limitation — Damage limitation is action that is taken to make the bad results of something as small as possible, when it is impossible to avoid bad results completely.
- dante (alighieri) — (born Durante Alighieri) 1265-1321; It. poet: wrote The Divine Comedy
- darwinian fitness — fitness (def 3).
- darwinian-fitness — health.
- data service unit — (communications) (DSU or "data service unit") A device used in digital transmission for connecting a CSU (Channel Service Unit) to Data Terminal Equipment (a terminal or computer), in the same way that a modem is used for connection to an analogue medium. A DSU provides a standard interface to a user's terminal which is compatible with modems and handles such functions as signal translation, regeneration, reformatting, and timing. The transmitting portion of the DSU processeses the customers' signal into bipolar pulses suitable for transmission over the digital facility. The receiving portion of the DSU is used both to extract timing information and to regenerate mark and space information from the received bipolar signal.
- daughter language — a language that has evolved from another specified language.
- david livingstone — David, 1813–73, Scottish missionary and explorer in Africa.
- 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.
- dead in the water — If you say that someone or something is dead in the water, you are emphasizing that they have failed, and that there is little hope of them being successful in the future.
- dead to the world — unaware of one's surroundings, esp fast asleep or very drunk
- dead tree edition — dead tree
- deadly nightshade — a poisonous Eurasian solanaceous plant, Atropa belladonna, having dull purple bell-shaped flowers and small very poisonous black berries
- death certificate — A death certificate is an official certificate signed by a doctor which states the cause of a person's death.
- death's-head moth — a European hawk moth, Acherontia atropos, having markings resembling a human skull on its upper thorax
- deathwatch beetle — a beetle, Xestobium rufovillosum, whose woodboring larvae are a serious pest. The adult produces a rapid tapping sound with its head that was once popularly supposed to presage death
- debrett's peerage — a list of the British aristocracy
- decellularization — (biology, medicine) The loss of cells from tissue.
- deceptive cadence — a cadence consisting of a dominant harmony followed by a resolution to a harmony other than the tonic.
- 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.
- dedifferentiating — Present participle of dedifferentiate.
- dedifferentiation — the reversion of the cells of differentiated tissue to a less specialized form
- deductible clause — a clause in an insurance policy stipulating that the insured will be liable for a specified initial amount of each loss, injury, etc., and that the insurance company will be liable for any additional costs up to the insured amount.
- deductive tableau — (tool) A theorem proof system consisting of a table whose rows contain assertions or goals. Variables in assertions are implicitly universally quantified and variables in goals are implicitly existentially quantified. The declarative meaning of a tableau is that if every instance of every assertion is true then some instance of at least one of the goals is true.
- deepwater horizon — an offshore oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, 40 miles (64km) south-east off the coast of Louisiana, that suffered a massive oil spill following an explosion in April 2010
- defamiliarisation — (arts) The representation of objects anew, in a way that we do not recognize, or that changes our reading of them.