18-letter words containing d, l, s
- butler's sideboard — a sideboard, often with a fall front, having on its top a china cabinet with glazed doors.
- cape breton island — an island off SE Canada, in NE Nova Scotia, separated from the mainland by the Strait of Canso: its easternmost point is Cape Breton. Pop: 132 298 (2006). Area: 10 280 sq km (3970 sq miles)
- celestial guidance — the guidance of a spacecraft or missile by reference to the position of one or more celestial bodies
- celestial latitude — the angular distance of a celestial body north or south from the ecliptic
- centralized school — a public school formed from the pupils and teachers of a number of discontinued smaller schools, especially in a rural district.
- centum call second — (unit) (CCS) A unit used (in North America) to quantify the total traffic running in a network. 1 CCS is 100 call-seconds. That means 1 CCS could be 2 calls of 50 seconds duration or 20 calls of 5 seconds duration.
- chambered nautilus — nautilus (def 1).
- child psychologist — a psychologist who specializes in treating children
- children of israel — the Jews; Hebrews
- children's crusade — a crusade to recover Jerusalem from the Saracens, undertaken in 1212 by thousands of French and German children who perished, were sold into slavery, or were turned back.
- chinese fire drill — a state of chaotic, often clamorous disorder.
- chuck-will's-widow — a large North American nightjar, Caprimulgus carolinensis, similar to the whippoorwill
- church of scotland — the established church in Scotland, Calvinist in doctrine and Presbyterian in constitution
- circular dichroism — selective absorption of one of the two possible circular polarizations of light.
- civil disobedience — Civil disobedience is the refusal by ordinary people in a country to obey laws or pay taxes, usually as a protest.
- classified section — the part of a publication that contains classified advertising
- cleopatra's needle — either of two Egyptian obelisks, originally set up at Heliopolis about 1500 bc: one was moved to the Thames Embankment, London, in 1878, the other to Central Park, New York, in 1880
- closed corporation — a corporation the stock of which is owned by a small number of persons and is rarely traded on the open market
- closed scholarship — a scholarship for which only certain people, such as those from a particular school or with a particular surname, are eligible
- closed-box testing — functional testing
- collision diameter — the distance between the centers of two colliding molecules when at their closest point of approach.
- colloidal solution — a mixture having particles of one component, with diameters between 10 −7 and 10 −9 metres, suspended in a continuous phase of another component. The mixture has properties between those of a solution and a fine suspension
- colossus of rhodes — a giant bronze statue of Apollo built on Rhodes in about 292–280 bc; destroyed by an earthquake in 225 bc; one of the Seven Wonders of the World
- common-law husband — a man considered to be a woman's husband after the couple have cohabited for several years
- 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
- 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.
- consolato del mare — a code of maritime law compiled in the Middle Ages: it drew upon ancient law and has influenced modern law.
- 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.
- continental shield — any of the large, low-lying areas in the Earth's crust that are composed of Precambrian crystalline rocks
- controlled-release — A controlled-release drug or preparation is released into the body in specified amounts over a specified period of time.
- cordless telephone — a portable battery-powered telephone with a short-range radio link to a fixed base unit
- cost of goods sold — The cost of goods sold is the cost of purchasing goods for resale, added to the cost of the raw materials and labor used to manufacture goods that are sold in a particular period of time.
- couldn't care less — If you say that you couldn't care less about someone or something, you are emphasizing that you are not interested in them or worried about them. In American English, you can also say that you could care less, with the same meaning.
- cracked distillate — A cracked distillate is a clear yellow liquid, mostly containing hydrocarbons, which is produced by steam cracking without a catalyst.
- crested dog's-tail — a common wiry perennial grass, Cynosurus cristatus, of meadows and pasture
- crested flycatcher — any of various tyrant flycatchers (esp. genus Myiarchus) with a prominent crest
- crocodile-infested — full of crocodiles
- cross-disciplinary — linking two or more fields of study
- crude oil desalter — A crude oil desalter is equipment which removes inorganic salts from crude oil, using chemical or electrostatic separation.
- cultural diffusion — act of diffusing; state of being diffused.
- cultural diversity — the cultural variety and cultural differences that exist in the world, a society, or an institution: Dying languages and urbanization are threats to cultural diversity.
- custodial sentence — a sentence given by a court that involves a term of imprisonment
- 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.
- 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-stick landing — Aeronautics, Aerospace. a landing of an airplane or space vehicle with the engine cut off.
- 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