20-letter words containing d, i, s, n, c
- field-ion microscope — a device in which the atomic structure of the surface of a conductor is made visible by introducing helium gas into the device and applying a high voltage to ionize and accelerate the gas toward a fluorescent screen.
- fission-track dating — the dating of samples of minerals by comparing the tracks in them by fission fragments of the uranium nuclei they contain, before and after irradiation by neutrons
- for sb's delectation — If you do something for someone's delectation, you do it to give them enjoyment or pleasure.
- force-field analysis — a decision-making technique, often presented graphically, that identifies all the positive and negative forces impinging on a problem
- fuming sulfuric acid — an oily, hygroscopic, corrosive liquid, H 2 S 2 O 7 , that, depending on purity, is colorless or dark brown: used chiefly as a dehydrating agent in the manufacture of explosives and as a sulfating or sulfonating agent in the manufacture of dyes.
- good driver discount — A good driver discount is a discount on insurance that is available to drivers who have no at-fault accidents and no traffic offenses during a particular period.
- green light district — an area in which prostitution is officially tolerated
- hard gelatin capsule — A hard gelatin capsule is a type of capsule that is usually used to contain medicine in the form of dry powder or very small pellets.
- have had one's chips — to be defeated, condemned to die, killed, etc
- heat of condensation — the heat liberated by a unit mass of gas at its boiling point as it condenses to a liquid: equal to the heat of vaporization.
- holder in due course — a person who has received a negotiable instrument in good faith and without notice that it is overdue, that there is any prior claim, or that there is a defect in the title of the person who negotiated it.
- household appliances — devices or machines, usually electrical, that are in your home and which you use to do jobs such as cleaning or cooking
- hydraulic suspension — a system of motor-vehicle suspension using hydraulic members, often with hydraulic compensation between front and rear systems (hydroelastic suspension)
- hyperadrenocorticism — Cushing's syndrome.
- in bad circumstances — (of a person) in a bad financial situation
- in-service education — training and education given to employed teachers throughout their career
- indicated horsepower — the horsepower of a reciprocating engine as shown by an indicator record. Abbreviation: ihp, IHP.
- inductive statistics — the branch of statistics dealing with conclusions, generalizations, predictions, and estimations based on data from samples.
- industrial democracy — control of an organization by the people who work for it, esp by workers holding positions on its board of directors
- industrial insurance — industrial life insurance.
- industrial sociology — the sociological study of social relationships and social structures in business settings.
- intermediate section — The intermediate section is the section of the borehole after the top hole, which has more consolidated rock.
- into/in cold storage — If you put an idea or plan into cold storage or in cold storage, you delay it for a while rather than acting on it as you originally intended.
- judicial proceedings — any action involving or carried out by a court of law
- labour-saving device — a machine, gadget, etc, that reduces (human) effort, hard work or labour
- land-office business — a lively, booming, expanding, or very profitable business.
- languedoc-roussillon — a region of S France, on the Gulf of Lions: consists of the departments of Lozère, Gard, Hérault, Aude, and Pyrénées-Orientales; mainly mountainous with a coastal plain
- lead with one's chin — to act so imprudently as to invite disaster
- linear address space — A memory addressing scheme used in processors where the whole memory can be accessed using a single address that fits in a single register or instruction. This contrasts with a segmented memory architecture, such as that used on the Intel 8086, where an address is given by an offset from a base address held in one of the "segment registers". Linear addressing greatly simplifies programming at the assembly language level but requires more instruction word bits to be allocated for an address.
- long island iced tea — a potent cocktail consisting of equal parts of, typically, five different distilled alcoholic liquors, usually vodka, gin, rum, tequila, and triple sec, with a small amount of mixer, usually cola
- longitudinal section — the representation of an object as it would appear if cut by the vertical plane passing through the longest axis of the object.
- magneto-optical disk — (hardware, storage) (MO) A plastic or glass disk coated with a compound (often TbFeCo) with special optical, magnetic and thermal properties. The disk is read by bouncing a low-intensity laser off the disk. Originally the laser was infrared, but frequencies up to blue may be possible giving higher storage density. The polarisation of the reflected light depends on the polarity of the stored magnetic field. To write, a higher intensity laser heats the coating up to its Curie point, allowing its magnetisation to be altered in a way that is retained when it has cooled. Although optical, they appear as hard drives to the operating system and do not require a special filesystem (they can be formatted as FAT, HPFS, NTFS, etc.). The initial 5.25" MO drives, introduced at the end of the 1980s, were the size of a full-height 5.25" hard drive (like in IBM PC XT) and the disks looked like a CD-ROM enclosed in an old-style cartridge In 2006, a 3.5" drive has the size of 1.44 megabyte diskette drive with disks about the size of a regular 1.44MB floppy disc but twice the thickness.
- magnetohydrodynamics — the branch of physics that deals with the motion of electrically conductive fluids, especially plasmas, in magnetic fields. Abbreviation: MHD.
- matched-pairs design — (of an experiment) concerned with measuring the values of the dependent variables for pairs of subjects that have been matched to eliminate individual differences and that are respectively subjected to the control and the experimental condition
- media access control — (networking) (MAC) The lower sublayer of the OSI data link layer. The interface between a node's Logical Link Control and the network's physical layer. The MAC differs for various physical media. See also MAC Address, Ethernet, IEEE 802.3, token ring.
- midcourse correction — a navigational correction made in the course of a ship, airplane, rocket, or space vehicle at some point between the beginning and end of the journey.
- middle-distance race — a race of a length between the sprints and the distance events, esp the 800 metres and the 1500 metres
- multicast addressing — Ethernet addressing scheme used to send packets to devices of a certain type or for broadcasting to all nodes. The least significant bit of the most significant byte of a multi-cast address is one.
- net domestic product — the gross domestic product minus an allowance for the depreciation of capital goods
- niemann-pick disease — a rare, hereditary lipid-storage disease, occurring primarily among Ashkenazic Jews, in which abnormal lipid metabolism results in enlargement of the liver, spleen, and lymph nodes, and in progressive mental and physical deterioration.
- noncondensing engine — a steam engine releasing exhaust steam to the atmosphere rather than condensing it to hot feedwater.
- north richland hills — a town in N Texas.
- not mince your words — If you say that someone does not mince their words, you mean that they speak in a forceful and direct way, especially when saying something unpleasant to someone.
- occupational disease — Also called industrial disease. a disease caused by the conditions or hazards of a particular occupation.
- operating conditions — Operating conditions are a set of conditions for operating a particular system or process.
- owner-occupied house — a house that is owned by the person who lives in it
- packed like sardines — If you say that a crowd of people are packed like sardines, you are emphasizing that they are sitting or standing so close together that they cannot move easily.
- parataxic distortion — a distortion in perception, especially of interpersonal relationships, based on a tendency to perceive others in accordance with a pattern determined by previous experiences.
- pentose nucleic acid — a nucleic acid containing a pentose.
- permonosulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).