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18-letter words containing i, g, n, t, e

  • creeping featurism — (jargon)   /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ (Or "feature creep") A systematic tendency to load more chrome and features onto systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed when originally designed. "The main problem with BSD Unix has always been creeping featurism." More generally, creeping featurism is the tendency for anything to become more complicated because people keep saying "Gee, it would be even better if it had this feature too". The result is usually a patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra little feature to help someone, and then another, and another, .... When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a cancer. Usually this term is used to describe computer programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the IRS 1040 form, and new cars. A similar phenomenon sometimes afflicts conscious redesigns; see second-system effect. See also creeping elegance.
  • cumulative scoring — a method of scoring in which the score of a partnership is taken as the sum of their scores on all hands played.
  • dead-stick landing — Aeronautics, Aerospace. a landing of an airplane or space vehicle with the engine cut off.
  • deadweight tonnage — the capacity in long tons of cargo, passengers, fuel, stores, etc. (deadweight tons) of a vessel: the difference between the loaded and light displacement tonnage of the vessel.
  • debt restructuring — Debt restructuring is a method of organizing a company's debts in a different way in order to make the company more likely to be able to pay them.
  • definitive plumage — the plumage of a bird that, once attained, does not change significantly in color or pattern for the rest of the bird's life.
  • dendrochronologist — One who carries out dendrochronology.
  • derestriction sign — a circular white sign with a black diagonal band signifying the lifting of any other speed restriction
  • desktop publishing — Desktop publishing is the production of printed materials such as newspapers and magazines using a desktop computer and a laser printer, rather than using conventional printing methods. The abbreviation DTP is also used.
  • detective sergeant — a police officer who investigates crime and who ranks above a detective constable but below a detective inspector
  • determinate growth — growth of a plant stem that is terminated early by the formation of a bud
  • developing country — a nonindustrialized poor country that is seeking to develop its resources by industrialization
  • diagnostic testing — Diagnostic testing is the testing of a vehicle, or one of its systems or parts, in order to identify why it is not working properly.
  • dielectric heating — the heating of a nonconducting substance caused by dielectric loss when the material is placed in a variable electric field.
  • digital humanities — (used with a singular verb) the study of literature, philosophy, etc., as facilitated by computer technology or digital media: Digital humanities uses data analysis to find patterns in large bodies of text. the set of methodologies used in such scholarship.
  • digital signatures — digital signature
  • digital technology — the branch of scientific or engineering knowledge that deals with the creation and practical use of digital or computerized devices, methods, systems, etc.: advances in digital technology.
  • digital television — a television broadcasting technology in which signals are transmitted as a sequence of binary numbers.
  • 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.
  • dispensing chemist — a shop where drugs and medicines are sold or given out
  • dissenting opinion — (in appellate courts) an opinion filed by a judge who disagrees with the majority decision of a case.
  • 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.
  • divergent thinking — thinking in an unusual and unstereotyped way, e.g. to generate several possible solutions to a problem
  • dna fingerprinting — the use of a DNA probe for the identification of an individual, as for the matching of genes from a forensic sample with those of a criminal suspect.
  • do a roaring trade — If someone does a roaring trade in a type of goods, they sell a lot of them.
  • do not give a hoot — If you say that you don't give a hoot or don't care two hoots about something, you are emphasizing that you do not care at all about it.
  • do one's own thing — a material object without life or consciousness; an inanimate object.
  • 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.
  • dressing table set — a set including a hairbrush, mirror and comb, often with silver backs
  • drinking chocolate — sweetened cocoa powder
  • drug-eluting stent — A drug-eluting stent is a tube placed into a blocked artery that slowly releases a drug to prevent another blockage in the artery.
  • duty-free shopping — the making of duty-free purchases
  • dwarf storage unit — (humour)   (DSU) An IBM term for a cupboard.
  • eastern algonquian — a subgroup of the Algonquian language family, comprising the languages spoken aboriginally from Nova Scotia to northeastern North Carolina.
  • eigendecomposition — (linear algebra) The factorization of a matrix into a canonical form, whereby the matrix is represented in terms of its eigenvalues and eigenvectors.
  • eighty-column mind — (abuse)   The sort said to be possessed by persons for whom the transition from punched card to paper tape was traumatic (nobody has dared tell them about disks yet). It is said that these people, including (according to an old joke) the founder of IBM, will be buried "face down, 9-edge first" (the 9-edge being the bottom of the card). This directive is inscribed on IBM's 1402 and 1622 card readers and is referenced in a famous bit of doggerel called "The Last Bug", the climactic lines of which are as follows: He died at the console Of hunger and thirst. Next day he was buried, Face down, 9-edge first. The eighty-column mind is thought by most hackers to dominate IBM's customer base and its thinking. See fear and loathing, card walloper.
  • eighty-twenty rule — (programming)   The program-design version of the law of diminishing returns. The 80/20 rule says that roughly 80% of the problem can be solved with 20% of the effort that it would take to solve the whole problem. For example, parsing e-mail addresses in "From:" lines in e-mail messages is notoriously difficult if you follow the RFC 2822 specification. However, about 60% of actual "From:" lines are in the format "From: Their Name <[email protected]>", with a far more constrained idea of what can be in "user" or "host" than in RFC 2822. Another 25% just add double-quotes around "Their Name". Matching just those two patterns would thus cover 85% of "From:" lines, with a tiny portion of the code required to fully implement RFC2822. (Adding support for "From: [email protected]" and "From: [email protected] (Their Name) " brings coverage to almost 100%, leaving only really baroque things that RFC-2822 permits, like "From: Pete(A wonderful \) chap)
  • electronic banking — the transfer of money between financial institutions through an exchange of electronic signals over a network
  • electronic editing — editing of a sound or vision tape recording by electronic rerecording rather than by physical cutting
  • electronic meeting — (messaging)   The use of a network of personal computers to improve communication that takes place in a meeting. Electronic meetings are effective with as few as two participants and with over 100 participants. Participants can be face-to-face in a meeting room or distributed around the world. They may all be participating at the same time or different times.
  • 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.
  • emergent evolution — the doctrine that, in the course of evolution, some entirely new properties, such as life and consciousness, appear at certain critical points, usually because of an unpredictable rearrangement of the already existing entities
  • energy consumption — amount of energy used
  • 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
  • ethnomethodologist — A person engaged in ethnomethodology.
  • ethnomusicological — Relating to or pertaining to ethnomusicology.
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