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18-letter words containing d, i, n, s

  • compensation order — (in Britain) the requirement of a court that an offender pay compensation for injury, loss, or damage resulting from an offence, either in preference to or as well as a fine
  • concussion grenade — a grenade designed to inflict damage by the force of its detonation rather than by the fragmentation of its casing.
  • condensation point — a point of which every neighborhood contains an uncountable number of points of a given set.
  • condensation trail — contrail.
  • conditional access — the encryption of television programme transmissions so that only authorized subscribers with suitable decoding apparatus may have access to them
  • conservation grade — relating to food produced using traditional methods where possible, and following strict specifications regarding animal feeds and welfare, the use of chemical fertilizers, wildlife conservation, and land management
  • considered harmful — (programming, humour)   A type of phrase based on the title of Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous note in the March 1968 Communications of the ACM, "Goto Statement Considered Harmful", which fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars. Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently harmful that it will (by policy) no longer print articles taking so assertive a position against a coding practice. In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and parodies bore titles of the form "X considered Y". The structured-programming wars eventually blew over with the realisation that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has remained as a persistent minor in-joke.
  • consolidation loan — a single loan which is taken out to pay off several separate existing loans
  • constitutionalized — Simple past tense and past participle of constitutionalize.
  • contact dermatitis — dermatitis caused by direct contact with an irritating substance, as an allergen or chemical
  • continental shield — any of the large, low-lying areas in the Earth's crust that are composed of Precambrian crystalline rocks
  • contradistinctions — Plural form of contradistinction.
  • countryside agency — (in England) a government agency that promotes the conservation and enjoyment of the countryside and aims to stimulate employment in rural areas
  • crocodile-infested — full of crocodiles
  • cross-disciplinary — linking two or more fields of study
  • cultural diffusion — act of diffusing; state of being diffused.
  • cursor dipped in x — (jargon)   The metaphorical source of the electronic equivalent of a poisoned-pen letter. Derived from English metaphors of the form "pen dipped in X" (where X = e.g. "acid", "bile", "vitriol"). These map over neatly to this hackish usage (the cursor being what moves, leaving letters behind, when one is composing on-line). "Talk about a nastygram! He must've had his cursor dipped in acid when he wrote that one!"
  • cushing's syndrome — a medical condition characterized by obesity, hypertension, excessive hair growth, etc., caused by an overactive adrenal gland or large doses of corticosteroids
  • custodial sentence — a sentence given by a court that involves a term of imprisonment
  • customs and excise — Customs and Excise is a British government department which is responsible for collecting taxes on imported and exported goods. Compare Customs Service.
  • dagwood (sandwich) — a thick sandwich with a variety of fillings, often of apparently incompatible foods
  • daisywheel printer — (printer)   A kind of impact printer where the characters are arranged on the ends of the spokes of a wheel (resembling the petals on a daisy). The wheel (usually made of plastic) is rotated to select the character to print and then an electrically operated hammer mechanism bends the selected spoke forward slightly, sandwiching an ink ribbon between the character and the paper, as in a typewriter. One advantage of this arrangement over that of a typewriter is that different wheels may be inserted to produce different typefaces.
  • danish west indies — the former possession of Denmark in the W Lesser Antilles, sold to the US in 1917
  • data flow analysis — (programming)   A process to discover the dependencies between different data items manipulated by a program. The order of execution in a data driven language is determined solely by the data dependencies. For example, given the equations 1. X = A + B 2. B = 2 + 2 3. A = 3 + 4 a data-flow analysis would find that 2 and 3 must be evaluated before 1. Since there are no data dependencies between 2 and 3, they may be evaluated in any order, including in parallel. This technique is implemented in hardware in some pipelined processors with multiple functional units. It allows instructions to be executed as soon as their inputs are available, independent of the original program order.
  • daytime television — television broadcasts that are shown during the daytime rather than in the evening
  • dead as a doornail — completely dead
  • dead man's fingers — a soft coral, Alcyonium digitatum, with long finger-like polyps
  • dead-man's fingers — any of various fungi, sponges, plant roots, animal parts, etc., having fingerlike projections and a pale or dull color, as the gray-black woodland fungus Xylaria polymorpha or the whitish spongy gills of a food crab.
  • dead-stick landing — Aeronautics, Aerospace. a landing of an airplane or space vehicle with the engine cut off.
  • deanthropomorphism — the ridding of philosophy or religion of anthropomorphic beliefs and doctrines.
  • debt consolidation — the process of taking out a new loan (often secured on one's property) in order to pay off a number of existing debts
  • debt restructuring — Debt restructuring is a method of organizing a company's debts in a different way in order to make the company more likely to be able to pay them.
  • dechristianization — The act of dechristianizing; the systematic removal of Christianity or Christian elements.
  • decision procedure — a procedure, as an algorithm, for determining in a finite number of steps the validity of any of a certain class of propositions.
  • deep-discount bond — a fixed-interest security that pays little or no interest but is issued at a substantial discount to its redemption value, thus largely substituting capital gain for income
  • deep-sea fisherman — a person who takes part in deep-sea fishing
  • defensive medicine — the practice by a doctor of ordering extensive, often unnecessary tests in order to minimize liability if accused of negligence
  • deficiency disease — any condition, such as pellagra, beriberi, or scurvy, produced by a lack of vitamins or other essential substances
  • deinstitutionalize — to discharge (a patient) as from a mental institution
  • deliver oneself of — to speak with deliberation or at length
  • delmarva peninsula — a peninsula of the northeast US, between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic
  • demand liabilities — the assets of a financial institution that are demandable by depositors
  • dendrochronologist — One who carries out dendrochronology.
  • derestriction sign — a circular white sign with a black diagonal band signifying the lifting of any other speed restriction
  • desalination plant — a factory where salt is removed from salt water in order to make the water suitable for drinking and irrigation
  • desktop publishing — Desktop publishing is the production of printed materials such as newspapers and magazines using a desktop computer and a laser printer, rather than using conventional printing methods. The abbreviation DTP is also used.
  • destruct mechanism — a mechanism that causes the destruction of a rocket or missile when activated
  • detective sergeant — a police officer who investigates crime and who ranks above a detective constable but below a detective inspector
  • devil's paintbrush — a perennial European hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum) with leafless flower stalks bearing a cluster of orange-red heads: now a common weed in N U.S. and Canada
  • diabetes insipidus — a disorder of the pituitary gland causing excessive thirst and excretion of large quantities of dilute urine
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