16-letter words containing d, o, t, a
- birthday honours — (in Britain) honorary titles conferred on the official birthday of the sovereign
- block and tackle — a hoisting device in which a rope or chain is passed around a pair of blocks containing one or more pulleys. The upper block is secured overhead and the lower block supports the load, the effort being applied to the free end of the rope or chain
- board and batten — a siding consisting of wide boards or of sheets of plywood set vertically with butt joints covered by battens.
- book of the dead — in ancient Egypt, a book of prayers and charms meant to help the soul in the afterworld
- bootstrap loader — (operating system) A short program loaded from non-volatile storage and used to bootstrap a computer. On early computers great efforts were expended on making the bootstrap loader short, in order to make it easy to toggle in via the front panel switches. It was just clever enough to read in a slightly more complex program (usually from punched cards or paper tape), to which it handed control. This program in turn read the application or operating system from a magnetic tape drive or disk drive. Thus, in successive steps, the computer "pulled itself up by its bootstraps" to a useful operating state. Nowadays the bootstrap loader is usually found in ROM or EPROM, and reads the first stage in from a fixed location on the disk, called the "boot block". When this program gains control, it is powerful enough to load the actual OS and hand control over to it. A diskless workstation can use bootp to load its OS from the network.
- bordeaux mixture — a fungicide consisting of a solution of equal quantities of copper sulphate and quicklime
- botanical garden — a place where collections of plants and trees are kept for scientific study and exhibition
- boundary dispute — dispute between neighbours about the boundary between their properties
- break the record — surpass previous highest, best
- brick-and-mortar — pertaining to conventional stores, businesses, etc., having physical buildings and facilities, as opposed to Internet or remote services.
- british honduras — Belize
- broadloom carpet — any carpet woven on a wide loom and not having seams, especially one wider than 54 inches (137 cm).
- brood parasitism — a type of parasitism in which a bird (brood parasite), as a cowbird or European cuckoo, lays and abandons its eggs in the nest of another species
- bundled software — software sold as part of a package with computers or other hardware or software
- butenedioic acid — either of two geometrical isomers with the formula HOOCCH:CHCOOH
- call data record — (telecommunications) (CDR) A data record that contains information related to a telephone call, including the origination and destination addresses of the call, the time the call started and ended, the duration of the call, the time of day the call was made, toll charges that were added through the network, or charges for operator services.
- call of the wild — a novel (1903) by Jack London.
- camborne-redruth — a former (until 1974) urban district in SW England, in Cornwall: formed in 1934 by the amalgamation of the neighbouring towns of Camborne and Redruth. Pop: 39 936 (2001)
- cantor's paradox — the paradox derived from the supposition of an all-inclusive universal set, since every set has more subsets than members while every subset of such a universal set would be a member of it
- cape cod cottage — a rectangular house one or one-and-one-half stories high, with a gable roof
- cape cod lighter — a device for lighting a fire, as in a fireplace, consisting of a lump of nonflammable material on a metal rod, that is soaked in kerosene or the like and lighted with a match.
- capital employed — the money used by a business for buying land, buildings, equipment etc
- carbon 14 dating — radiocarbon dating.
- carbon-14 dating — radiocarbon dating.
- carboxypeptidase — any of several digestive enzymes that catalyze the removal of an amino acid from the end of a peptide chain having a free carbonyl group.
- cardiotachometer — a device for counting heartbeats, usually displaying the number of beats per minute
- carrot and stick — If an organization has a carrot and stick approach or policy, they offer people things in order to persuade them to do something and punish them if they refuse to do it.
- casting director — the person in charge of choosing of actors for a production
- catherine howard — Catherine, c1520–42, fifth wife of Henry VIII.
- cathode ray tube — (hardware) (CRT) An electrical device for displaying images by exciting phosphor dots with a scanned electron beam. CRTs are found in computer VDUs and monitors, televisions and oscilloscopes. The first commercially practical CRT was perfected on 29 January 1901 by Allen B DuMont. A large glass envelope containing a negative electrode (the cathode) emits electrons (formerly called "cathode rays") when heated, as in a vacuum tube. The electrons are accelerated across a large voltage gradient toward the flat surface of the tube (the screen) which is covered with phosphor. When an electron strikes the phosphor, light is emitted. The electron beam is deflected by electromagnetic coils around the outside of the tube so that it scans across the screen, usually in horizontal stripes. This scan pattern is known as a raster. By controlling the current in the beam, the brightness at any particular point (roughly a "pixel") can be varied. Different phosphors have different "persistence" - the length of time for which they glow after being struck by electrons. If the scanning is done fast enough, the eye sees a steady image, due to both the persistence of the phospor and of the eye itself. CRTs also differ in their dot pitch, which determines their spatial resolution, and in whether they use interlace or not.
- cathode-ray tube — A cathode-ray tube is a device in televisions and computer terminals which sends an image onto the screen.
- cedar revolution — the popular protests in 2005 that brought down the Lebanese cabinet and prompted Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon
- chamber of trade — a national organization representing local chambers of commerce
- chanson de geste — one of a genre of Old French epic poems celebrating heroic deeds, the most famous of which is the Chanson de Roland
- character comedy — comedy, or a comedy, in which the main source of humour is in the character of the people represented in it
- chase the dragon — to smoke opium or heroin
- chest of drawers — A chest of drawers is a low, flat piece of furniture with drawers in which you keep clothes and other things.
- chiclet keyboard — (hardware, abuse) A keyboard with a small, flat rectangular or lozenge-shaped rubber or plastic keys that look like pieces of Chiclets chewing gum. Used especially to describe the original IBM PCjr keyboard. Vendors unanimously liked these because they were cheap, and a lot of early portable and laptop computers were launched with them. Customers rejected the idea with almost equal unanimity, and chiclets are not often seen on anything larger than a digital watch any more.
- chipped potatoes — chips
- chloracetic acid — chloroacetic acid.
- chlorinated lime — bleaching powder.
- chopped tomatoes — tomatoes cut into pieces
- cigarette holder — A cigarette holder is a narrow tube that you can put a cigarette into in order to hold it while you smoke it.
- cisaconitic acid — a stereoisomer of 1-propene-1,2,3 tricarboxylic acid, C 6 H 6 O 6 , an important intermediate in the Krebs cycle.
- city of aberdeen — a council area in NE Scotland, established in 1996. Pop: 206 600 (2003 est). Area: 186 sq km (72 sq miles)
- cladogenetically — By means of cladogenesis.
- cleaning product — a detergent or other household cleaner
- clermont-ferrand — a city in S central France: capital of Puy-de-Dôme department; industrial centre. Pop: 140 957 (2011)
- cloak-and-suiter — a manufacturer or seller of clothing.
- cloistered vault — a vault having the form of a number of intersecting coves.