18-letter words containing g, i, a, c
- digital video disc — Digital Versatile Disc
- diphosphoglycerate — an ester of phosphoric acid and glyceric acid that occurs in the blood and that promotes the release of hemoglobin-bound oxygen.
- directional signal — any of four signal lights on the front left, front right, rear left, and rear right of an automotive vehicle that, when actuated by the driver, flash in pairs on the side toward which a turn is to be made.
- discharge printing — a fabric-printing method in which the material is dyed and then certain areas are discharged so as to permit the original hue or its color replacement to act as a pattern against the colored ground.
- distracted driving — driving a vehicle while engaging in an activity that has the potential to distract the driver from the task of driving: Bans on cell phone use in cars will help to reduce the dangers of distracted driving.
- dragline excavator — a power shovel that operates by being dragged by cables at the end of an arm or jib: used for quarrying, opencast mining, etc
- dramatic monologue — a poetic form in which a single character, addressing a silent auditor at a critical moment, reveals himself or herself and the dramatic situation.
- drinking chocolate — sweetened cocoa powder
- ducking and diving — evasiveness
- dynamic psychology — any system of psychology that emphasizes the interaction between different motives, emotions, and drives
- eclipsing variable — a variable star whose changes in brightness are caused by periodic eclipses of two stars in a binary system.
- economic geography — a branch of geography that deals with the relation of physical and economic conditions to the production and utilization of raw materials and their manufacture into finished products.
- eggshell porcelain — a type of very thin translucent porcelain originally made in China
- electoral register — An electoral register is an official list of all the people who have the right to vote in an election.
- electric discharge — electricity emitted
- electrocardiograms — Plural form of electrocardiogram.
- electrocardiograph — A machine used for electrocardiography.
- electrocorticogram — a record of brain waves obtained by placing electrodes directly on the surface of the exposed cerebral cortex
- electronic banking — the transfer of money between financial institutions through an exchange of electronic signals over a network
- electronic tagging — Electronic tagging is a system in which a criminal or suspected criminal has an electronic device attached to them which enables the police to know if they leave a particular area.
- electroretinograms — Plural form of electroretinogram.
- endangered species — animal, plant becoming extinct
- environment agency — an official agency providing information on environmental issues, esp rivers, flooding and pollution
- equinoctial spring — either of the two highest spring tides that occur at the equinoxes
- ethnomusicological — Relating to or pertaining to ethnomusicology.
- ethnopsychological — Relating to ethnopsychology.
- euclid's algorithm — (algorithm) (Or "Euclidean Algorithm") An algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor (GCD) of two numbers. It relies on the identity gcd(a, b) = gcd(a-b, b) To find the GCD of two numbers by this algorithm, repeatedly replace the larger by subtracting the smaller from it until the two numbers are equal. E.g. 132, 168 -> 132, 36 -> 96, 36 -> 60, 36 -> 24, 36 -> 24, 12 -> 12, 12 so the GCD of 132 and 168 is 12. This algorithm requires only subtraction and comparison operations but can take a number of steps proportional to the difference between the initial numbers (e.g. gcd(1, 1001) will take 1000 steps).
- exercise programme — a programme detailing a range of physical exercises and the amount of time each exercise should be performed, used especially in gymnasiums, where they are typically tailored to individuals' needs
- feeping creaturism — /fee'ping kree"ch*r-izm/ A deliberate spoonerism for creeping featurism, meant to imply that the system or program in question has become a misshapen creature of hacks. This term isn"t really well defined, but it sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. It is probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in the dark making their customary noises.
- fibrocartilaginous — a type of cartilage having a large number of fibers.
- financial planning — the devising of a program for the allocation and management of finances and capital through budgeting, investment, etc.
- frederick douglass — Frederick, 1817–95, U.S. ex-slave, abolitionist, and orator.
- free-range chicken — a chicken kept in natural nonintensive conditions
- fuel-saving device — a device that increases the fuel efficiency of a vehicle, so that it uses less fuel for a further distance
- fuming nitric acid — a colorless, yellowish, or brownish fuming corrosive liquid, usually prepared from nitric acid by the addition of excess nitrogen dioxide: used in organic synthesis for nitration, and as an oxidizer in liquid propellants for rockets.
- functional program — (language) A program employing the functional programming approach or written in a functional language.
- functional testing — (testing) (Or "black-box testing", "closed-box testing") The application of test data derived from functional requirements without regard to how the system is implemented.
- furnishing fabrics — fabrics used to make and cover furniture
- galactic longitude — the angular distance in degrees measured eastward in the galactic plane from a radius drawn from the earth as center to the constellation Sagittarius.
- galilean telescope — a refracting telescope that forms an erect image, consisting of an objective of relatively long focal length that causes light rays to converge and an eyepiece of short focal length that causes them to diverge.
- galvanic corrosion — Galvanic corrosion is a type of corrosion caused by bringing together two different metals, one of which corrodes more rapidly than it would alone while the other corrodes less rapidly.
- garbage collection — (programming) (GC) The process by which dynamically allocated storage is reclaimed during the execution of a program. The term usually refers to automatic periodic storage reclamation by the garbage collector (part of the run-time system), as opposed to explicit code to free specific blocks of memory. Automatic garbage collection is usually triggered during memory allocation when the amount free memory falls below some threshold or after a certain number of allocations. Normal execution is suspended and the garbage collector is run. There are many variations on this basic scheme. Languages like Lisp represent expressions as graphs built from cells which contain pointers and data. These languages use automatic dynamic storage allocation to build expressions. During the evaluation of an expression it is necessary to reclaim space which is used by subexpressions but which is no longer pointed to by anything. This reclaimed memory is returned to the free memory pool for subsequent reallocation. Without garbage collection the program's memory requirements would increase monotonically throughout execution, possibly exceeding system limits on virtual memory size. The three main methods are mark-sweep garbage collection, reference counting and copying garbage collection. See also the AI koan about garbage collection.
- gas-discharge tube — any tube in which an electric discharge takes place through a gas
- gene amplification — an increase in the frequency of replication of a DNA segment.
- general confession — a prayer confessing sins
- general precession — the precession that results from both lunisolar precession and planetary precession; precession of the equinoxes.
- genetic algorithms — genetic algorithm
- geneva conventions — one of a series of international agreements, first made in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1864, establishing rules for the humane treatment of prisoners of war and of the sick, the wounded, and the dead in battle.
- gensym corporation — (company) A company that supplies software and services for intelligent operations management. Common applications include quality management, process optimisation, dynamic scheduling, network management, energy and environmental management, and process modelling and simulation. Their products include G2.
- geometrical optics — the branch of optics dealing with light as rays, especially in the study of the effects of lenses and mirrors on light beams and of their combination in optical instruments.