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16-letter words containing i, d, r, s

  • currier and ives — any of a 19th-cent. series of prints showing the manners, people, and events of the times
  • dark-side hacker — (jargon, legal)   A criminal or malicious hacker; a cracker. From George Lucas's Darth Vader, "seduced by the dark side of the Force". The implication that hackers form a sort of elite of technological Jedi Knights is intended. Opposite: samurai.
  • darwin's finches — the finches of the subfamily Geospizinae of the Galapagos Islands, showing great variation in bill structure and feeding habits: provided Darwin with evidence to support his theory of evolution
  • data abstraction — (data)   Any representation of data in which the implementation details are hidden (abstracted). Abstract data types and objects are the two primary forms of data abstraction.
  • data compression — the act of compressing.
  • data warehousing — the use of large amounts of data taken from multiple sources to create reports and for data analysis
  • davidson current — a winter countercurrent that flows N along the W coast of the U.S.
  • de broglie waves — the set of waves that represent the behaviour of an elementary particle, or some atoms and molecules, under certain conditions. The de Broglie wavelength, λ, is given by λ = h/mv, where h is the Planck constant, m the mass, and v the velocity of the particle
  • dearborn heights — city in SE Mich.: suburb of Detroit: pop. 58,000
  • deboursification — (jargon)   Removal of irrelevant newsgroups from the Newsgroups header of a followup. The term applies particularly to the removal of frivolous groups added by one of the Kooks. See also: sneck.
  • debt forgiveness — the action or process of forgiving people their debts
  • decentralisation — Alternative spelling of decentralization.
  • dechristianizing — Present participle of dechristianize.
  • decision problem — (theory)   A problem with a yes/no answer. Determining whether some potential solution to a question is actually a solution or not. E.g. "Is 43669" a prime number?". This is in contrast to a "search problem" which must find a solution from scratch, e.g. "What is the millionth prime number?". See decidability.
  • decision support — Software used to aid management decision making, typically relying on a decision support database.
  • deconstructively — In a deconstructive manner.
  • deindustrialised — Simple past tense and past participle of deindustrialise.
  • deindustrialized — Simple past tense and past participle of deindustrialize.
  • deliberativeness — The state or quality of being deliberative.
  • delirium tremens — a severe psychotic condition occurring in some persons with chronic alcoholism, characterized by delirium, tremor, anxiety, and vivid hallucinations
  • delta conversion — delta reduction
  • demilitarisation — The removal of a military force, usually at the end of hostilities or as part of a treaty.
  • demineralisation — Alternative spelling of demineralization.
  • demoiselle crane — a gray crane, Anthropoides virgo, of northern Africa, Europe, and Asia, having long, white plumes behind each eye.
  • dental insurance — Dental insurance is insurance that pays for treatment by a dentist.
  • depart this life — to die
  • departmentalizes — Third-person singular simple present indicative form of departmentalize.
  • departure signal — a piece of equipment beside a railway which indicates to train drivers whether they should depart or not
  • depolymerisation — (chemistry) alternative spelling of depolymerization.
  • depression glass — cheap glassware mass-produced during the Depression of the 1930s, usually molded in patterns in pale colors, and collectible since the early 1970s
  • depressurization — to remove the air pressure from (a pressurized compartment of an aircraft or spacecraft).
  • derbyshire chair — a chair of the mid-17th century, made of oak, usually without arms, and having a back of two carved rails between square uprights.
  • designer stubble — (on a man) facial hair that is carefully trimmed to give what is thought to be an attractive rugged slightly unshaven look
  • destroying angel — a white slender very poisonous basidiomycetous toadstool, Amanita virosa, having a pronounced volva, frilled, shaggy stalk, and sickly smell
  • destructibleness — The quality of being destructible.
  • determinableness — Capability of being determined; determinability.
  • devil's triangle — Bermuda Triangle.
  • devonshire cream — clotted cream.
  • devonshire split — a kind of yeast bun split open and served with whipped cream or butter and jam
  • dew-point spread — the degrees of difference between the air temperature and the dew point
  • diagonal process — a form of argument in which a new member of a set is constructed from a list of its known members by making the nth term of the new member differ from the nth term of the nth member. The new member is thus different from every member of the list
  • diamond district — the part of a town where diamond merchants and jewellers have their businesses
  • diastereoisomers — Plural form of diastereoisomer.
  • diesel-hydraulic — a locomotive driven by a diesel engine through hydraulic transmission and torque converters
  • digital research — (company)   The company which developed CP/M, the operating system used on many of the first generation 8-bit microprocessor-based personal computers. Digital Research also produced DR-DOS. Address: Santa Cruz, CA, USA.
  • dimension lumber — building lumber cut to standard or specified sizes.
  • dinosaurs mating — (humour)   The activity said to occur when yet another big iron merger or buy-out occurs; reflects a perception by hackers that these signal another stage in the long, slow dying of the mainframe industry. Also described as "elephants mating": lots of noise and action at a high level, with an eventual outcome in the somewhat distant future. In its glory days of the 1960s, it was "IBM and the Seven Dwarves": Burroughs, Control Data, General Electric, Honeywell, NCR, RCA, and Univac. Early on, RCA sold out to Univac and GE also sold out, and it was "IBM and the BUNCH" (an acronym for Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell) for a while. Honeywell was bought out by Bull. Univac in turn merged with Sperry to form Sperry/Univac, which was later merged (although the employees of Sperry called it a hostile takeover) with Burroughs to form Unisys in 1986 (this was when the phrase "dinosaurs mating" was coined). In 1991 AT&T absorbed NCR, only to spit it out again in 1996. Unisys bought Convergent Technologies in 1988 and later others. More such earth-shaking unions of doomed giants seem inevitable.
  • diodorus siculus — late 1st century b.c, Greek historian.
  • diphosphorylated — (biochemistry) phosphorylated with two units of phosphoric acid.
  • diplomatic corps — the entire body of diplomats accredited to and resident at a court or capital.
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