16-letter words containing e, r, a, d
- cottage industry — A cottage industry is a small business that is run from someone's home, especially one that involves a craft such as knitting or pottery.
- couvade syndrome — a psychosomatic condition in which the spouse or partner of a pregnant woman experiences symptoms of childbirth or pregnancy
- cracked fraction — A cracked fraction is a petroleum fraction (= a portion separated according to a physical property) that has been broken down from a fraction with larger molecules.
- cracked up to be — alleged or believed to be
- crash test dummy — a dummy used in crash tests
- creme de bananes — a liqueur flavored with bananas.
- crested screamer — a goose-like aquatic bird, Chauna torquata, of the family Anhimidae of tropical and subtropical South America, having a crest on the back of its head: order Anseriformes (ducks, geese, etc)
- critical density — the density of matter that would be required to halt the expansion of the universe
- croydon facelift — the tightening effect on the skin of a woman's face caused by securing the hair at the back of the head in a tight ponytail
- crystal detector — a demodulator, used esp in microwave circuits and in early radio receivers, consisting of a thin metal wire in point contact with a semiconductor crystal
- cumberland sauce — a cold sauce made from orange and lemon juice, port, and redcurrant jelly, served with ham, game, or other meat
- curlew sandpiper — a common Eurasian sandpiper, Calidris ferruginea, having a brick-red breeding plumage and a greyish winter plumage
- currency trading — the business of trading in different currencies in order to profit from exchange rate differentials
- currier and ives — any of a 19th-cent. series of prints showing the manners, people, and events of the times
- cyanogen bromide — a colorless, slightly water-soluble, poisonous, volatile, crystalline solid, BrCN, used chiefly as a fumigant and a pesticide.
- d-glyceraldehyde — an isomer of glyceraldehyde in which the OH group is on the right side of the asymmetric carbon atom.
- dacryocystectomy — The surgical removal of a part of the lacrimal sac.
- dakota territory — a territory in the N central U.S., from 1861 to 1868 comprising present-day North Dakota and South Dakota, and parts of Montana and Wyoming.
- dangling pointer — (programming) A reference that doesn't actually lead anywhere. In C and some other languages, a pointer that doesn't actually point at anything valid. Usually this happens because it formerly pointed to something that has moved or disappeared, e.g. a heap-allocated block which has been freed and reused. Used as jargon in a generalisation of its technical meaning; for example, a local phone number for a person who has since moved is a dangling pointer.
- dark of the moon — the period during which the moon is not visible.
- dark-side hacker — (jargon, legal) A criminal or malicious hacker; a cracker. From George Lucas's Darth Vader, "seduced by the dark side of the Force". The implication that hackers form a sort of elite of technological Jedi Knights is intended. Opposite: samurai.
- darwin's finches — the finches of the subfamily Geospizinae of the Galapagos Islands, showing great variation in bill structure and feeding habits: provided Darwin with evidence to support his theory of evolution
- darwinian theory — Darwin's theory of evolution, which holds that all species of plants and animals developed from earlier forms by hereditary transmission of slight variations in successive generations, and that natural selection determines which forms will survive
- data compression — the act of compressing.
- data preparation — the process of converting data or information into a form that can be read by a computer, so that the data can then be entered into the computer
- data warehousing — the use of large amounts of data taken from multiple sources to create reports and for data analysis
- database manager — a person in charge of designing, maintaining, and controlling a database
- davidson current — a winter countercurrent that flows N along the W coast of the U.S.
- day of reckoning — If someone talks about the day of reckoning, they mean a day or time in the future when people will be forced to deal with an unpleasant situation which they have avoided until now.
- daylight robbery — If someone charges you a great deal of money for something and you think this is unfair or unreasonable, you can refer to this as daylight robbery.
- de broglie waves — the set of waves that represent the behaviour of an elementary particle, or some atoms and molecules, under certain conditions. The de Broglie wavelength, λ, is given by λ = h/mv, where h is the Planck constant, m the mass, and v the velocity of the particle
- de morgan's laws — (in formal logic and set theory) the principles that conjunction and disjunction, or union and intersection, are dual. Thus the negation of P & Q is equivalent to not-P or not-Q
- de-concentration — to reduce the power or control of (a corporation, industry, etc.); decentralize.
- dead sea scrolls — a collection of manuscripts in Hebrew and Aramaic discovered in caves near the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956. They are widely held to have been written between about 100 bc and 68 ad and provide important biblical evidence
- dear john letter — a letter from someone (esp to a man) breaking off a love affair
- dearborn heights — city in SE Mich.: suburb of Detroit: pop. 58,000
- debating chamber — a room where a legislative assembly holds debates
- deboursification — (jargon) Removal of irrelevant newsgroups from the Newsgroups header of a followup. The term applies particularly to the removal of frivolous groups added by one of the Kooks. See also: sneck.
- debut appearance — debut
- decentralisation — Alternative spelling of decentralization.
- decentralization — to distribute the administrative powers or functions of (a central authority) over a less concentrated area: to decentralize the national government.
- dechristianizing — Present participle of dechristianize.
- decimal currency — a system of currency in which the monetary units are parts or powers of ten
- decimal fraction — a fraction whose denominator is some power of 10, usually indicated by a dot (decimal point or point) written before the numerator: as 0.4 = 4/10; 0.126 = 126/1000.
- declare war (on) — to make a formal declaration of being at war (with)
- dedifferentiated — That has undergone dedifferentiation.
- deferred annuity — an annuity that commences not less than one year after the final purchase premium
- definite article — The word 'the' is sometimes called the definite article.
- deflationary gap — a situation in which total spending in an economy is insufficient to buy all the output that can be produced with full employment
- degenerate state — a state of a system characterized by a set of quantum numbers and represented by an eigenfunction. The energy of each state is precise within the limits imposed by the uncertainty principle but may be changed by applying a field of force. States that have the same energy are called degenerate