17-letter words containing h, o, d, l, e
- dendroarchaeology — (archaeology) the science that uses dendrochronology to date wooden material from archaeological sites.
- dephlogisticating — Present participle of dephlogisticate.
- dephosphorylation — the removal of a phosphate group from an organic compound, as in the changing of ATP to ADP.
- designer clothing — Designer clothing is fashionable or luxury clothing made by, or carrying the label of, a well-known fashion designer.
- desktop publisher — desktop publishing
- dessert chocolate — cooking chocolate
- diacetone alcohol — a colorless, flammable liquid with a pleasant odor, C 6 H 12 O 2 : used as a solvent for lacquers, dyes, cellulose nitrate, and resins.
- dialect geography — linguistic geography
- dielectrophoresis — Dielectrophoresis is the movement of uncharged particles (= ones with no electrical charge) when a changing electric field is applied.
- diethylene glycol — a syrupy colorless liquid, C 4 H 10 O 3 , used as a solvent for cellulose nitrate and as a fabric softener.
- dimethylformamide — a colourless liquid widely used as a solvent and sometimes as a catalyst. Formula: (CH3)2NCHO
- dimethylsulfoxide — DMSO.
- diphenylhydantoin — a white, slightly water-soluble powder, C 15 H 11 N 2 O 2 , used in the form of its sodium salt to prevent or arrest convulsions in epilepsy.
- dishonourableness — Alternative spelling of dishonorableness.
- down the plughole — If you say that something has gone down the plughole, you mean that it has failed or has been lost or wasted.
- down-at-the-heels — of a shabby, run-down appearance; seedy: He is rapidly becoming a down-at-heel drifter and a drunk.
- drive to the wall — to force into an awkward situation
- 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.
- english shellcode — (security) A kind of malware that is embedded in ordinary English sentences. English shellcode attempts to avoid detection by antivirus software by making the code resemble, e.g. e-mail text or Wikipedia entries. It was first revealed by researchers at Johns Hopkins.
- ethernet meltdown — A network meltdown on Ethernet.
- ethinyloestradiol — Alternative form of ethinylestradiol.
- exception handler — Special code which is called when an exception occurs during the execution of a program. If the programmer does not provide a handler for a given exception, a built-in system exception handler will usually be called resulting in abortion of the program run and some kind of error indication being returned to the user. Examples of exception handler mechanisms are Unix's signal calls and Lisp's catch and throw.
- exceptional child — a gifted child
- fear and loathing — (Hunter S. Thompson) A state inspired by the prospect of dealing with certain real-world systems and standards that are totally brain-damaged but ubiquitous - Intel 8086s, COBOL, EBCDIC, or any IBM machine except the Rios (also known as the RS/6000).
- flog a dead horse — a large, solid-hoofed, herbivorous quadruped, Equus caballus, domesticated since prehistoric times, bred in a number of varieties, and used for carrying or pulling loads, for riding, and for racing.
- follow the hounds — to hunt a fox, etc. on horseback with hounds
- follow the leader — a child's game in which players, one behind the other, follow a leader and must repeat or follow everything he or she does.
- for all the world — the earth or globe, considered as a planet.
- fourfold purchase — a tackle that is composed of a rope passed through two fourfold blocks in such a way as to provide mechanical power in the ratio of 1 to 5 or 1 to 4, depending on whether hauling is done on the running or the standing block and without considering friction. Compare tackle (def 2).
- french somaliland — a former name of Djibouti (def 1).
- front-wheel drive — a drive system in which engine power is transmitted through the front wheels only.
- garden heliotrope — the common valerian, Valeriana officinalis, especially when cultivated as an ornamental.
- generalized other — an individual's internalized impression of societal norms and expectations.
- george whitefield — George, 1714–70, English Methodist evangelist.
- give to the world — to publish
- golden hand-shake — a special incentive, as generous severance pay, given to an older employee as an inducement to elect early retirement.
- good-time charlie — an affable, sociable, pleasure-loving man.
- grandfather clock — a pendulum floor clock having a case as tall as or taller than a person; tall-case clock; long-case clock.
- grandmother clock — a pendulum clock similar to a grandfather's clock but shorter.
- ground angle shot — a photograph or film shot in which the lens is near the ground, usually pointing up somewhat
- guadalupe hidalgo — a city in the Federal District of Mexico: famous shrine; peace treaty 1848.
- guardhouse lawyer — a person in military service, especially an inmate of a guardhouse or brig, who is or claims to be an authority on military law, regulations, and soldiers' rights.
- hairy-tailed mole — a blackish North American mole, Parascalops breweri, having a short, hairy tail.
- haitian solenodon — a rare shrewlike nocturnal mammal of the Caribbean, Solenodon paradoxus, having a long hairless tail and an elongated snout: family Solenodontidae, order Insectivora (insectivores)
- half-round chisel — a cold chisel with a semicircular cutting edge used for making narrow channels
- hall of residence — Halls of residence are buildings with rooms or flats, usually built by universities or colleges, in which students live during the term.
- hard rock geology — (loosely) of or relating to igneous or metamorphic rocks, as in mining (hard-rock mining) and geology (hard-rock geology)
- hardware platform — a group of compatible computers that can run the same software.
- helen keller mode — 1. State of a hardware or software system that is deaf, dumb, and blind, i.e. accepting no input and generating no output, usually due to an infinite loop or some other excursion into deep space. (Unfair to the real Helen Keller, whose success at learning speech was triumphant.) See also go flatline, catatonic. 2. On IBM PCs under MS-DOS, refers to a specific failure mode in which a screen saver has kicked in over an ill-behaved application which bypasses the very interrupts the screen saver watches for activity. Your choices are to try to get from the program's current state through a successful save-and-exit without being able to see what you're doing, or to re-boot the machine. This isn't (strictly speaking) a crash.
- henry cabot lodge — Henry Cabot, 1850–1924, U.S. public servant and author: senator 1893–1924.