17-letter words containing f, e, o
- damp-proof course — A damp-proof course is the same as a damp course.
- david copperfield — a novel (1850) by Charles Dickens.
- de facto standard — A widespread consensus on a particular product or protocol which has not been ratified by any official standards body, such as ISO, but which nevertheless has a large market share. The archetypal example of a de facto standard is the IBM PC which, despite is many glaring technical deficiencies, has gained such a large share of the personal computer market that it is now popular simply because it is popular and therefore enjoys fierce competition in pricing and software development.
- de-baathification — the process of removing the members and influence of the Ba'ath Party from public office in Iraq following the US-led invasion of 2003
- dedifferentiation — the reversion of the cells of differentiated tissue to a less specialized form
- deep-frozen foods — foodstuffs that have been frozen for storage
- defamiliarisation — (arts) The representation of objects anew, in a way that we do not recognize, or that changes our reading of them.
- defamiliarization — Art, Literature. a theory and technique, originating in the early 20th century, in which an artistic or literary work presents familiar objects or situations in an unfamiliar way, prolonging the perceptive process and allowing for a fresh perspective.
- defending counsel — a barrister who defends a client in a trial
- degree of freedom — one of the minimum number of parameters necessary to describe a state or property of a system
- denial of service — a deliberate interruption in access to a computer system or network, esp by using multiple computers to generate an unmanageable volume of traffic (distributed denial of service)
- denial-of-service — pertaining to or being an incident in which a computer or computer network is disabled, disrupting access or service: a website hit by a denial-of-service attack; unintentional denial-of-service problems.
- deprofessionalise — to remove from professional control, influence, manipulation, etc.
- deprofessionalize — to remove from professional control, influence, manipulation, etc.
- deucalion's flood — a flood sent by Zeus that wiped out the entire population of the earth, except for Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha
- devil's food cake — a rich chocolate cake
- differential tone — a musical sound sometimes heard when two loud notes are sounded together, lower in pitch than either
- diffused junction — a semiconductor junction formed by diffusing acceptor or donor impurity atoms into semiconductor material to form regions of p-type or n-type conductivity
- dimethylformamide — a colourless liquid widely used as a solvent and sometimes as a catalyst. Formula: (CH3)2NCHO
- dimethylsulfoxide — DMSO.
- director of music — a person in charge of musical training and performance at an institution such as a college, especially the head bandmaster of a military band
- disidentification — The act of disidentifying, or rejecting a personal or group identity.
- distributed force — A distributed force is a force that acts on a large part of a surface, not just on one place.
- do the bidding of — to be obedient to; carry out the orders of
- double quatrefoil — a charge having the form of a foil with eight leaves, used especially as the cadency mark of a ninth son.
- double refraction — the separation of a ray of light into two unequally refracted, plane-polarized rays of orthogonal polarizations, occurring in crystals in which the velocity of light rays is not the same in all directions.
- drained of colour — colourless
- dress-down friday — In some companies employees are allowed to wear clothes that are less smart than usual on a Friday. This day is known as a dress-down Friday.
- drool-proof paper — (jargon) Documentation that has been obsessively dumbed down, to the point where only a cretin could bear to read it, is said to have succumbed to the "drool-proof paper syndrome" or to have been "written on drool-proof paper". For example, this is an actual quote from Apple Computer's LaserWriter manual: "Do not expose your LaserWriter to open fire or flame."
- drop on the floor — To react to an error condition by silently discarding messages or other valuable data. "The gateway ran out of memory, so it just started dropping packets on the floor." Also frequently used of faulty mail and netnews relay sites that lose messages. See also black hole, bit bucket.
- droplet infection — infection spread by airborne droplets of secretions from the nose, throat, or lungs.
- due course of law — the regular administration of the law, according to which no citizen may be denied his or her legal rights and all laws must conform to fundamental, accepted legal principles, as the right of the accused to confront his or her accusers.
- egg on one's face — embarrassment due to an obvious blunder
- electrofiltration — Electrofiltration is a separation process in which an electric field is applied across a filter to improve separation.
- electron affinity — a measure of the ability of an atom or molecule to form a negative ion, expressed as the energy released when an electron is attached
- electronic office — integrated computer systems designed to handle office work
- empirical formula — a chemical formula indicating the proportion of each element present in a molecule
- employee benefits — benefits, such as health insurance, pension payments, or childcare, given to employees in addition to their usual salary or wage
- employment office — any of a number of government offices established to collect and supply to the unemployed information about job vacancies and to employers information about availability of prospective workers
- ends of the earth — remote regions
- enforcement order — an order by a court to force a person or organization to comply with a regulation or law
- enrolment figures — the numbers of people enrolling at an institution, on a course, etc
- equalization fund — a monetary reserve established by a country to provide funds for maintaining the official exchange rates of its currency by equalizing the buying and selling of foreign exchange.
- equation of state — any equation that expresses the relationship between the temperature, pressure, and volume of a substance
- error of judgment — a wrong or bad decision
- eudoxus of cnidus — ?406–?355 bc, Greek astronomer and mathematician; believed to have calculated the length of the solar year
- executive officer — the second-in-command of any of certain military units
- exfoliating cream — a granular cosmetic preparation that removes dead cells from the skin's surface
- explicit function — a function whose values may be computed directly, as y = x2 + 1
- explosive forming — a rapid method of forming a metal object in which components are made by subjecting the metal to very high pressures generated by a controlled explosion