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18-letter words containing d, r, u

  • broadcasting house — any of a number of buildings in the UK from which the BBC broadcasts or has broadcast
  • building materials — materials such as bricks, cement, timber, etc
  • burn one's bridges — If you burn your bridges, you do something which forces you to continue with a particular course of action, and makes it impossible for you to return to an earlier situation or relationship.
  • butler's sideboard — a sideboard, often with a fall front, having on its top a china cabinet with glazed doors.
  • butter-and-egg man — a prosperous businessman from a small town or a farmer who spends his money ostentatiously on visits to a big city.
  • butterhead lettuce — a major group of lettuce varieties having soft, pliable leaves and small, loose heads, including bibb and Boston lettuce
  • chambered nautilus — nautilus (def 1).
  • character-building — improving certain good or useful traits in a person's character, esp self-reliance, endurance, and courage
  • chartered surveyor — (in Britain) a surveyor who is registered with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors as having the qualifications, training, and experience to satisfy their professional requirements
  • 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.
  • chlorohydroquinone — a white to light-tan, crystalline, water-soluble solid, C 6 H 3 Cl(OH) 2 , used chiefly in organic synthesis and as a developer in photography.
  • chocolate-coloured — dark brown
  • 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.
  • circulating medium — currency serving as a medium of exchange
  • clew down (or up) — to lower (or raise) a sail by means of clew lines
  • coast-guard cutter — a cutter used by the U.S. Coast Guard.
  • coastguard station — the headquarters or local offices of a coastguard
  • 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
  • communication cord — a cord or chain in a train which may be pulled by a passenger to stop the train in an emergency
  • computer-generated — produced by a computer program
  • concussion grenade — a grenade designed to inflict damage by the force of its detonation rather than by the fragmentation of its casing.
  • conductivity water — water that has a conductivity of less than 0.043 × 10–6 S cm–1
  • conjugated protein — a biochemical compound consisting of a sequence of amino acids making up a simple protein to which another nonprotein group (a prosthetic group), such as a carbohydrate or lipid group, is attached
  • connected subgraph — (mathematics)   A connected graph consisting of a subset of the nodes and edges of some other graph.
  • consecrated ground — ground that has been made or declared sacred or holy, and is therefore suitable for Christian burial
  • 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.
  • continued fraction — a number plus a fraction whose denominator contains a number and a fraction whose denominator contains a number and a fraction, and so on
  • costume department — the department in a theatre or television company that is responsible for actors' costumes
  • 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.
  • counter-adaptation — the act of adapting.
  • counter-productive — Something that is counter-productive achieves the opposite result from the one that you want to achieve.
  • countryside agency — (in England) a government agency that promotes the conservation and enjoyment of the countryside and aims to stimulate employment in rural areas
  • crude oil desalter — A crude oil desalter is equipment which removes inorganic salts from crude oil, using chemical or electrostatic separation.
  • crude oil fraction — A crude oil fraction is a component of crude oil, which has its own particular molecular composition, weight, and boiling point.
  • 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.
  • cumberland plateau — division of the W Appalachians, extending from S W.Va. to N Ala.
  • 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!"
  • curvature of field — a monochromatic aberration of a lens or other optical system in which the focal surface is curved, the refracted image of an object oriented perpendicular to the axis of the lens lying on a curved surface rather than in a plane perpendicular to the axis.
  • 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
  • dafydd ap gruffudd — died 1283, Welsh leader. Claiming the title Prince of Wales (1282), he led an unsuccessful revolt against Edward I: executed
  • dangerous offender — an offender who is deemed by a court of law to be likely to engage in further violent conduct, and who thus becomes eligible for an indefinite prison sentence
  • de bruijn notation — (language)   A variation of lambda notation for specifying functions using numbers instead of names to refer to formal parameters. A reference to a formal parameter is a number which gives the number of lambdas (written as \ here) between the reference and the lambda which binds the parameter. E.g. the function \ f . \ x . f x would be written \ . \ . 1 0. The 0 refers to the innermost lambda, the 1 to the next etc. The chief advantage of this notation is that it avoids the possibility of name capture and removes the need for alpha conversion.
  • death-valley curve — a curve on a graph showing how the capital of a new company plotted against time declines sharply as the venture capital is used up before income reaches predicted levels
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • defense calculator — IBM 701
  • delmarva peninsula — a peninsula of the northeast US, between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic
  • departure platform — a raised area at a railway station from which passengers can board trains prior to their departing
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