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19-letter words containing d, i, t, r

  • binocular disparity — the small differences in the positions of the parts of the images falling on each eye that results when each eye views the scene from a slightly different position; these differences make stereoscopic vision possible
  • bird's-foot trefoil — any of various creeping leguminous Eurasian plants of the genus Lotus, esp L. corniculatus, with red-tipped yellow flowers and seed pods resembling the claws of a bird
  • bismuth oxychloride — a white, crystalline, water-insoluble powder, BiOCl, used chiefly in the manufacture of pigments, face powders, and artificial pearls.
  • bit-paired keyboard — (hardware)   (Obsolete, or "bit-shift keyboard") A non-standard keyboard layout that seems to have originated with the Teletype ASR-33 and remained common for several years on early computer equipment. The ASR-33 was a mechanical device (see EOU), so the only way to generate the character codes from keystrokes was by some physical linkage. The design of the ASR-33 assigned each character key a basic pattern that could be modified by flipping bits if the SHIFT or the CTRL key was pressed. In order to avoid making the thing more of a Rube Goldberg kluge than it already was, the design had to group characters that shared the same basic bit pattern on one key. Looking at the ASCII chart, we find: high low bits bits 0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001 010 ! " # $ % & ' ( ) 011 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 This is why the characters !"#$%&'() appear where they do on a Teletype (thankfully, they didn't use shift-0 for space). This was *not* the weirdest variant of the QWERTY layout widely seen, by the way; that prize should probably go to one of several (differing) arrangements on IBM's even clunkier 026 and 029 card punches. When electronic terminals became popular, in the early 1970s, there was no agreement in the industry over how the keyboards should be laid out. Some vendors opted to emulate the Teletype keyboard, while others used the flexibility of electronic circuitry to make their product look like an office typewriter. These alternatives became known as "bit-paired" and "typewriter-paired" keyboards. To a hacker, the bit-paired keyboard seemed far more logical - and because most hackers in those days had never learned to touch-type, there was little pressure from the pioneering users to adapt keyboards to the typewriter standard. The doom of the bit-paired keyboard was the large-scale introduction of the computer terminal into the normal office environment, where out-and-out technophobes were expected to use the equipment. The "typewriter-paired" standard became universal, "bit-paired" hardware was quickly junked or relegated to dusty corners, and both terms passed into disuse.
  • bloodstock industry — the breeding and training of racehorses
  • blue-breasted quail — a small, brightly colored quail, Coturnix chinensis, of southern Asia and Australia, widely kept as a cage bird.
  • blue-ringed octopus — a highly venomous octopus, Octopus maculosus, of E Australia which exhibits blue bands on its tentacles when disturbed
  • blue-tongued lizard — a large Australian lizard, Tiliqua scincoides, characterized by having a cobalt-blue tongue.
  • board certification — the process of certifying that a physician has passed an examination and met the standards of a professional organization representing a particular medical specialty.
  • board of trade unit — a unit of electrical energy equal to 1 kilowatt-hour
  • boat-tailed grackle — a large grackle, Quiscalus major, of the southeastern U.S., that folds its tail into a shape resembling the keel of a boat.
  • bordering countries — countries that share a border with a particular country
  • brand contamination — the process by which the reputation of a particular brand or product becomes tarnished by adverse publicity
  • british west indies — a former name for the states in the Caribbean that are members of the Commonwealth: the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts-Nevis, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; along with the islands which remain as United Kingdom dependencies: Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the British Virgin Islands
  • brokered convention — a party convention in which many delegates are pledged to favorite sons who use their blocs of votes to bargain with leading candidates who lack a majority of delegate support.
  • brush-tailed possum — any of several widely-distributed Australian possums of the genus Trichosurus
  • building contractor — an individual or company that contracts for the construction of houses, etc
  • butabarbital sodium — a barbiturate, C 10 H 15 N 2 NaO 3 , used as a sedative and hypnotic.
  • cable-stayed bridge — a type of suspension bridge in which the supporting cables are connected directly to the bridge deck without the use of suspenders
  • capital expenditure — expenditure on acquisitions of or improvements to fixed assets
  • captain of industry — You can refer to the owners or senior managers of industrial companies as captains of industry.
  • cat scratch disease — a disorder characterized by fever and swelling of the lymph glands, caused by a viral infection resulting from the scratch or bite of a cat.
  • cat-scratch disease — an ailment characterized by fever and swollen glands and believed to be caused by bacteria transmitted by the scratch or bite of a cat
  • cathodic protection — a technique for protecting metal structures, such as steel ships and pipelines, from electrolytic corrosion by making the structure the cathode in a cell, either by applying an electromotive force directly or by putting it into contact with a more electropositive metal
  • chamber of deputies — the lower house of the legislature of certain countries, as Italy.
  • chandrasekhar limit — the upper limit to the mass of a white dwarf, equal to 1.44 solar masses. A star having a mass above this limit will continue to collapse to form a neutron star
  • chartered librarian — (in Britain) a librarian who has obtained a qualification from the Library Association in addition to a degree or diploma in librarianship
  • chassis dynamometer — A chassis dynamometer is a piece of test equipment fitted with rollers for the wheels of a vehicle, that is capable of providing drive input and measuring output such as power and torque at the wheels.
  • cherenkov radiation — the electromagnetic radiation produced when a charged particle moves through a medium at a greater velocity than the velocity of light in that medium
  • chicken-fried steak — a cheap cut of beefsteak that is fried in batter
  • chloroplatinic acid — a red-brown, crystalline, water-soluble solid, H 2 PtCl 6 ⋅6H 2 O, used chiefly in platinizing glass, metals, and ceramic ware.
  • chrestien de troyes — c1140–c90, French poet.
  • christian democracy — the beliefs, principles, practices, or programme of a Christian Democratic party
  • circular definition — a definition in which the definiendum (the expression being defined) or a variant of it appears in the definiens (the expression that defines it).
  • circulating decimal — repeating decimal
  • clandestine entrant — a person who hides in or on a vehicle as it enters the United Kingdom with the aim of avoiding immigration controls
  • client-server model — client-server
  • cobaltous hydroxide — a rose-red, amorphous, water-insoluble powder, Co 2 O 3 ⋅3H 2 O, used chiefly in the preparation of cobalt salts and in the manufacture of paint and varnish driers.
  • coefficient of drag — the ratio of the drag on a body moving through air to the product of the velocity and surface area of the body.
  • collect on delivery — payment in cash when a purchase or shipment is delivered
  • colorado tick fever — a usually mild viral disease occurring in the Rocky Mountain regions of the United States, carried by a tick, Dermacentor andersoni, and characterized by fever, sensitivity to light, headache, and leg and back pain.
  • come into the world — to be born
  • command interpreter — (operating system)   A program which reads textual commands from the user or from a file and executes them. Some commands may be executed directly within the interpreter itself (e.g. setting variables or control constructs), others may cause it to load and execute other files. When an IBM PC is booted BIOS loads and runs the MS-DOS command interpreter into memory from file COMMAND.COM found on a floppy disk or hard disk drive. The commands that COMMAND.COM recognizes (e.g. COPY, DIR, PRN) are called internal commands, in contrast to external commands which are executable files.
  • comminuted fracture — a fracture in which the bone is splintered or fragmented
  • committed data rate — (communications)   (CDR) The data transfer rate that an ISP guarantees a virtual circuit will carry. The CDR is the data portion of Committed Information Rate (CIR).
  • common de-nominator — Mathematics. a number that is a multiple of all the denominators of a set of fractions.
  • compact disc player — a machine for playing compact discs
  • compact disc writer — (storage)   (CD burner) A device that can write data to Compact Disc Recordable (CD-R) or Compact Disc Rewritable (CD-RW) discs. Now both these CD formats are often combined with a DVD writer.
  • compact disk player — a device for playing compact disks.
  • computer dictionary — Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
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