16-letter words containing d, u, r, t
- departure lounge — In an airport, the departure lounge is the place where passengers wait before they get onto their plane.
- departure signal — a piece of equipment beside a railway which indicates to train drivers whether they should depart or not
- depleted uranium — Depleted uranium is a type of uranium that is used in some bombs.
- depressurization — to remove the air pressure from (a pressurized compartment of an aircraft or spacecraft).
- deputy secretary — the Deputy Secretary of State or Defense etc
- designer stubble — (on a man) facial hair that is carefully trimmed to give what is thought to be an attractive rugged slightly unshaven look
- destructibleness — The quality of being destructible.
- deuterocanonical — of or constituting a second or subsequent canon; specif., designating certain Biblical books accepted as canonical in the Roman Catholic Church, but held by Protestants to be apocryphal
- digital computer — a computer that processes information in digital form.
- dinosaurs mating — (humour) The activity said to occur when yet another big iron merger or buy-out occurs; reflects a perception by hackers that these signal another stage in the long, slow dying of the mainframe industry. Also described as "elephants mating": lots of noise and action at a high level, with an eventual outcome in the somewhat distant future. In its glory days of the 1960s, it was "IBM and the Seven Dwarves": Burroughs, Control Data, General Electric, Honeywell, NCR, RCA, and Univac. Early on, RCA sold out to Univac and GE also sold out, and it was "IBM and the BUNCH" (an acronym for Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell) for a while. Honeywell was bought out by Bull. Univac in turn merged with Sperry to form Sperry/Univac, which was later merged (although the employees of Sperry called it a hostile takeover) with Burroughs to form Unisys in 1986 (this was when the phrase "dinosaurs mating" was coined). In 1991 AT&T absorbed NCR, only to spit it out again in 1996. Unisys bought Convergent Technologies in 1988 and later others. More such earth-shaking unions of doomed giants seem inevitable.
- direct discourse — quotation of a speaker in which the speaker's exact words are repeated.
- direction number — the component of a vector along a given line; any number proportional to the direction cosines of a given line.
- discourteousness — The state or quality of being discourteous.
- disequilibration — to put out of equilibrium; unbalance: A period of high inflation could disequilibrate the monetary system.
- disreputableness — The state or quality of being disreputable or disgraceful; disreputability.
- distributed term — a term applying equally to every member of the class it designates, as doctors in no doctors are overworked
- distributionally — In a distributional manner.
- distributive law — a theorem asserting that one operator can validly be distributed over another
- district council — the local ruling body of an urban or rural district.
- diverticulectomy — (surgery) The surgical removal of a diverticulum.
- divisional court — a high court in which at least two judges sit
- do-it-yourselfer — an advocate or enthusiast of do-it-yourself
- doctor's surgery — A doctor's surgery is the same as a doctor's office.
- documentary film — factual, informative film
- double centering — a method of extending a survey line by taking the average of two foresights, one with the telescope direct and one with it inverted, made each time by transiting the telescope after a backsight.
- double monastery — a religious community of both men and women who live in separate establishments under the same superior and who worship in a common church.
- double solitaire — a game of solitaire for two persons, each player usually having a pack and layout but pooling foundations with the opponent.
- double-breasting — the practice of employing nonunion workers, especially in a separate division, to supplement the work of higher-paid union workers.
- draught excluder — a device (such as a strip of wood, or a long cylindrical cushion) placed at the bottom of a door to keep out draughts
- draw and quarter — to disembowel and dismember (a person) after hanging
- drinking-up time — (in Britain) a short time allowed for finishing drinks before closing time in a public house
- driver education — a course of study, as for high-school students, that teaches the techniques of driving a vehicle, along with basic vehicle maintenance, safety precautions, and traffic regulations and laws.
- drogue parachute — Also called drogue. a small parachute that deploys first in order to pull a larger parachute from its pack.
- drug trafficking — smuggling illegal drugs
- drugstore cowboy — a young man who loafs around drugstores or on street corners.
- dual personality — a disorder in which an individual possesses two dissociated personalities.
- ducktail-haircut — DA.
- dumont d'urville — Jules Sébastien César [zhyl sey-bas-tyan sey-zar] /ʒül seɪ basˈtyɛ̃ seɪˈzar/ (Show IPA), 1790–1842, French naval officer: explored South Pacific and Antarctic.
- duplex apartment — an apartment with rooms on two connected floors.
- duplicate bridge — a form of contract bridge used in tournaments in which contestants play the identical series of deals, with each deal being scored independently, permitting individual scores to be compared.
- educational park — a group of elementary and high schools, usually clustered in a parklike setting and having certain facilities shared by all grades, that often accommodates students from a large area.
- electrohydraulic — Relating to electrohydraulics.
- equidistribution — An equal distribution.
- exhumation order — a legal instruction to exhume a body
- external auditor — sb brought in to check financial records
- external student — a student studying a university subject extramurally
- fashion industry — the industry that deals with the world of fashion
- federated church — a church whose membership includes two or more congregations of different denominational affiliation.
- feel the draught — to be short of money
- find favour with — to be approved of by someone