18-letter words containing g, r, a, n, c
- cyrano de bergerac — Savinien (savinjɛ̃). 1619–55, French writer and soldier, famous as a duellist and for his large nose. He became widely known through the verse drama Cyrano de Bergerac (1897) by Edmond Rostand
- datacenter manager — (job) A person who plans and directs all computer and peripheral operations, data entry, data control scheduling and quality control.
- dependency grammar — a type of generative grammar in which grammatical structure is determined by the relationship between a governor and its dependents
- detective sergeant — a police officer who investigates crime and who ranks above a detective constable but below a detective inspector
- dictionary catalog — a library catalog having all its entries, including authors, titles, subjects, etc., in one general alphabetical sequence.
- dielectric heating — the heating of a nonconducting substance caused by dielectric loss when the material is placed in a variable electric field.
- 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
- echoencephalograph — a device that employs reflected ultrasonic waves to examine the position of brain structures.
- 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.
- egg and spoon race — a novelty race in which contestants each carry an egg in a spoon to the finish line, the winner being the first to finish without dropping or breaking the egg.
- egg-and-spoon race — a race in which runners carry an egg balanced in a spoon
- eggshell porcelain — a type of very thin translucent porcelain originally made in China
- 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
- exchange programme — an arrangement in which people from different countries visit each other's country, perhaps to strengthen links between them or to improve foreign language skills
- farm the long acre — to graze cows on the verge of a road
- 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.
- fracture toughness — The fracture toughness of a material is how likely it is to resist fracture.
- free-range chicken — a chicken kept in natural nonintensive conditions
- 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.
- furnishing fabrics — fabrics used to make and cover furniture
- 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.
- general confession — a prayer confessing sins
- general contractor — a person who contracts to construct a building or buildings, for a stipulated sum, in accordance with certain plans and specifications, or to remodel or build an addition to a building
- general precession — the precession that results from both lunisolar precession and planetary precession; precession of the equinoxes.
- genetic algorithms — genetic algorithm
- 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.
- gentleman-commoner — (formerly) a member of a class of commoners enjoying special privileges at Oxford University.
- german east africa — a former German territory in E Africa, the area now comprised of continental Tanzania and the independent republics of Rwanda and Burundi.
- golden bantam corn — a horticultural variety of sweet corn having yellow kernels.
- gooseneck barnacle — goose barnacle
- graduated cylinder — a narrow, cylindrical container marked with horizontal lines to represent units of measurement and used to precisely measure the volume of liquids.
- grammatical gender — gender based on arbitrary assignment, without regard to the referent of a noun, as in French le livre (masculine), “the book,” and German das Mädchen (neuter), “the girl.”.
- grand canyon state — Arizona (used as a nickname).
- grand council fire — a formal gathering of camp fire members requiring a minimum attendance of three troops.
- grandfather clause — U.S. History. a clause in the constitutions of some Southern states after 1890 intended to permit whites to vote while disfranchising blacks: it exempted from new literacy and property qualifications for voting those men entitled to vote before 1867 and their lineal descendants.
- granulated surface — a roughened surface