20-letter words containing e, u, r, o
- documentary evidence — law: written
- double fertilization — the fertilization process characteristic of flowering plants, in which one sperm cell of a pollen grain fertilizes an egg cell while a second fuses with two polar nuclei to produce a triploid body that gives rise to the endosperm.
- double-aspect theory — a monistic theory that holds that mind and body are not distinct substances but merely different aspects of a single substance
- double-trailer truck — tandem trailer (def 1).
- drum and bugle corps — a marching band of drum players and buglers.
- drunk and disorderly — If someone is charged with being drunk and disorderly, they are charged with being drunk and behaving in a noisy, offensive, or violent way in public.
- drunk mouse syndrome — (Also "mouse on drugs") A malady exhibited by the mouse pointing device of some computers. The typical symptom is for the mouse cursor on the screen to move in random directions and not in sync with the motion of the actual mouse. Can usually be corrected by unplugging the mouse and plugging it back again. Another recommended fix for optical mice is to rotate your mouse mat 90 degrees. At Xerox PARC in the 1970s, most people kept a can of copier cleaner (isopropyl alcohol) at their desks. When the steel ball on the mouse had picked up enough cruft to be unreliable, the mouse was doused in cleaner, which restored it for a while. However, this operation left a fine residue that accelerated the accumulation of cruft, so the dousings became more and more frequent. Finally, the mouse was declared "alcoholic" and sent to the clinic to be dried out in a CFC ultrasonic bath.
- dry-bulb thermometer — a thermometer having a dry bulb: used in conjunction with a wet-bulb thermometer in a psychrometer.
- duck-billed dinosaur — hadrosaur.
- due process (of law) — the course of legal proceedings established by the legal system of a nation or state to protect individual rights
- early sunday morning — a painting (1930) by Edward Hopper.
- ecclesiastical court — a church court in ecclesiastical matters, presided over by members of the clergy and usually having no compulsory jurisdiction.
- education department — the department of a local authority that is concerned with education, or the government department concerned with education
- eight queens problem — eight queens puzzle
- eleanor of aquitaine — ?1122–1204, queen of France (1137–52) by her marriage to Louis VII and queen of England (1154–89) by her marriage to Henry II; mother of the English kings Richard I and John
- electoral boundaries — the way that a country or area is divided for the purposes of voting in an election
- electromagnetic pump — a device for pumping liquid metals by placing a pipe between the poles of an electromagnet and passing a current through the liquid metal
- electromagnetic unit — any unit that belongs to a system of electrical cgs units in which the magnetic constant is given the value of unity and is taken as a pure number
- electronic signature — electronic proof of a person's identity
- elementary education — the first six to eight years of a child's education
- elizabeth of hungary — Saint. 1207–31, Hungarian princess who devoted herself to charity and asceticism. Feast day: Nov 17 and 19
- entry qualifications — the qualifications people wishing to enter an organization, university, etc, have to have
- equilibrium constant — The equilibrium constant is the ratio between the amount of reactants and the amount of product for a particular chemical reaction, used to calculate chemical behavior.
- equity of redemption — the right that a mortgager has in equity to redeem his property on payment of the sum owing, even though the sum is overdue
- equivalence relation — (mathematics) A relation R on a set including elements a, b, c, which is reflexive (a R a), symmetric (a R b => b R a) and transitive (a R b R c => a R c). An equivalence relation defines an equivalence class. See also partial equivalence relation.
- erythema infectiosum — a mild infectious disease of childhood, caused by a virus, characterized by fever and a red rash spreading from the cheeks to the limbs and trunk
- estrela mountain dog — a sturdy well-built dog of a Portuguese breed with a long thick coat and a thick tuft of hair round the neck, often used as a guard dog
- european social fund — one of the four Structural Funds of the European Union which aims to support employment and the economic and social well-being of EU member countries
- exclusive or circuit — a computer logic circuit having two or more input wires and one output wire and giving a high-voltage output signal if a low-voltage signal is fed to one or more, but not all, of the input wires
- federal constitution — Constitution of the United States.
- flame-fusion process — Verneuil process.
- flavour of the month — If you think that something or someone is very popular at a particular time, you can say that they are flavour of the month.
- fold-and-thrust belt — a linear or arcuate region of the earth's surface that has been subjected to severe folding and thrust faulting
- fondue bourguignonne — a dish consisting of pieces of steak impaled on forks, cooked in oil at the table and dipped in sauces
- for future reference — If you keep information for future reference, you keep it because it might be useful in the future.
- four-colour glossies — 1. Literature created by marketroids that allegedly contains technical specs but which is in fact as superficial as possible without being totally content-free. "Forget the four-colour glossies, give me the tech ref manuals." Often applied as an indication of superficiality even when the material is printed on ordinary paper in black and white. Four-colour-glossy manuals are *never* useful for finding a problem. 2. [rare] Applied by extension to manual pages that don't contain enough information to diagnose why the program doesn't produce the expected or desired output.
- fourteenth amendment — an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1868, defining national citizenship and forbidding the states to restrict the basic rights of citizens or other persons.
- fourth international — a loose federation of small groups of radical socialists formed in 1936 under the leadership of Leon Trotsky and hostile to the Soviet Union. Compare international (def 6).
- freight pass-through — a special allowance or discounted price given a bookseller or bookstore by a publishing house for paying the freight charge on a shipment of books ordered: so called because the shipping charge is passed on to the consumer by an increase in the suggested retail price for each book. Abbreviation: FPT.
- frequency modulation — FM.
- frontenac et palluau — Comte de (Louis de Buade) 1620?–98, French governor of New France 1672–82, 1689–98.
- fulminate of mercury — a gray, crystalline solid, Hg(CNO) 2 , used chiefly in the manufacture of commercial and military detonators.
- gastroduodenostomies — Plural form of gastroduodenostomy.
- general postal union — former name of Universal Postal Union. Abbreviation: GPU.
- gentleman of fortune — an adventurer.
- geoffrey of monmouth — 1100?–1154, English chronicler.
- get a real computer! — (jargon) A typical hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work done on a toy system or bitty box. The threshold for "real computer" rises with time. As of mid-1993 it meant multi-tasking, with a hard disk, and an address space bigger than 16 megabytes. At this time, according to GLS, computers with character-only displays were verging on "unreal". In 2001, a real computer has a one gigahertz processor, 128 MB of RAM, 20 GB of hard disk, and runs Linux.
- get one's finger out — to begin or speed up activity, esp after initial delay or slackness
- get someone's number — a numeral or group of numerals.
- get under one's skin — the external covering or integument of an animal body, especially when soft and flexible.