17-letter words containing l, a, d, i, e
- distance learning — education in which students receive instruction over the Internet, from a video, etc., instead of going to school.
- distillers' grain — a by-product of the distillation process for making whisky, used as an animal foodstuff
- double insulation — Double insulation is insulation that consists of both basic insulation and supplementary insulation.
- double pair royal — a set of four cards of the same denomination, worth 12 points.
- double quatrefoil — a charge having the form of a foil with eight leaves, used especially as the cadency mark of a ninth son.
- double refraction — the separation of a ray of light into two unequally refracted, plane-polarized rays of orthogonal polarizations, occurring in crystals in which the velocity of light rays is not the same in all directions.
- double track line — a railway line with double track
- downwardly mobile — See under vertical mobility (def 1).
- downwardly-mobile — See under vertical mobility (def 1).
- drained of colour — colourless
- drink like a fish — any of various cold-blooded, aquatic vertebrates, having gills, commonly fins, and typically an elongated body covered with scales.
- drive to the wall — to force into an awkward situation
- drive up the wall — to cause to become crazy or furious
- drive-by download — an incidence of an unwanted program being automatically downloaded to a computer, often without the user's knowledge
- duality principle — the principle that a mathematical duality exists under certain conditions.
- dull as dishwater — water in which dishes are, or have been, washed.
- dutch elm disease — a disease of elms characterized by wilting, yellowing, and falling of the leaves and caused by a fungus, Ceratostomella ulmi, transmitted by bark beetles.
- dynamically typed — dynamic typing
- dynamics analyzer — (language) (DYANA) An early language specialised for vibrational and other dynamic physical systems.
- early closing day — a day on which most shops in a town or area close after lunch
- east indian lotus — a southern Asian lotus, Nelumbo nucifera, of the water lily family, having fragrant pink or rose flowers.
- eat flaming death — (humour, abuse) A construction popularised among hackers by the infamous CPU Wars comic; supposedly derive from a famously turgid line in a WWII-era anti-Nazi propaganda comic that ran "Eat flaming death, non-Aryan mongrels!" or something of the sort (however, it is also reported that the Firesign Theater's 1975 album "In The Next World, You're On Your Own" included the phrase "Eat flaming death, fascist media pigs"; this may have been an influence). Used in humorously overblown expressions of hostility. "Eat flaming death, EBCDIC users!"
- economic blockade — an embargo on trade with a country, esp one which prohibits receipt of exports from that country, with the intention of disrupting the country's economy
- edward fitzgerald — Edward, 1809–83, English poet: translator of drama and poetry, especially of Omar Khayyám.
- electric retarder — An electric retarder is an electromagnetic transmission brake that is only effective when a vehicle is moving.
- electricity board — a company which supplies electricity
- electrocardiogram — A record or display of a person’s heartbeat produced by electrocardiography.
- emergency landing — an occasion when a place is forced to land: for example, because of a mechanical fault, bad weather, terrorism, etc.
- epicycloidal gear — a gear of an epicyclic train
- epidemiologically — With regard to epidemiology.
- equalization fund — a monetary reserve established by a country to provide funds for maintaining the official exchange rates of its currency by equalizing the buying and selling of foreign exchange.
- esprit d'escalier — clever repartee one thinks of too late
- 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
- falkland islander — a person from the Falkland Islands
- false bread-fruit — ceriman.
- 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).
- feasibility study — (systems analysis) Part of the systems develpment life cycle which aims to determine whether it is sensible to develop some system. The most popular model of feasibility study is "TELOS", standing for Technical, Economic, Legal, Operational, Schedule. Technical Feasibility: does the technology exist to implement the proposed system? Is it a practical proposition? Economic Feasibility: is the system cost-effective? Do benefits outweigh costs? Legal Feasibility: is there any conflict between the proposed system and legal requirements, e.g. the Data Protection Act? Operational Feasibility: are the current work practices and procedures adequate to support the new system? Schedule Feasibility: can the system be developed in time? After the feasibility study, the requirements analysis should be carried out.
- feint-ruled paper — writing paper with light horizontal lines printed across at regular intervals
- fiddleback spider — brown recluse spider.
- field sales force — a team of people selling a product or service in the field as opposed to over the telephone, etc
- financial adviser — A financial adviser is someone whose job it is to advise people about financial products and services.
- first-aid classes — classes which teach people how to give immediate medical help in an emergency
- flagrante delicto — Law. in the very act of committing the offense.
- folie de grandeur — a delusion of grandeur; megalomania.
- fore-and-aft sail — any of various sails, as jib-headed sails, gaff sails, lugsails, lateen sails, spritsails, staysails, and jibs, that do not set on yards and whose normal position, when not trimmed, is in a fore-and-aft direction amidships.
- fractal dimension — (mathematics) A common type of fractal dimension is the Hausdorff-Besicovich Dimension, but there are several different ways of computing fractal dimension. Fractal dimension can be calculated by taking the limit of the quotient of the log change in object size and the log change in measurement scale, as the measurement scale approaches zero. The differences come in what is exactly meant by "object size" and what is meant by "measurement scale" and how to get an average number out of many different parts of a geometrical object. Fractal dimensions quantify the static *geometry* of an object. For example, consider a straight line. Now blow up the line by a factor of two. The line is now twice as long as before. Log 2 / Log 2 = 1, corresponding to dimension 1. Consider a square. Now blow up the square by a factor of two. The square is now 4 times as large as before (i.e. 4 original squares can be placed on the original square). Log 4 / log 2 = 2, corresponding to dimension 2 for the square. Consider a snowflake curve formed by repeatedly replacing ___ with _/\_, where each of the 4 new lines is 1/3 the length of the old line. Blowing up the snowflake curve by a factor of 3 results in a snowflake curve 4 times as large (one of the old snowflake curves can be placed on each of the 4 segments _/\_). Log 4 / log 3 = 1.261... Since the dimension 1.261 is larger than the dimension 1 of the lines making up the curve, the snowflake curve is a fractal. [sci.fractals FAQ].
- frederick william — 1795–1861, king of Prussia 1840–61 (brother of William I of Prussia).
- french somaliland — a former name of Djibouti (def 1).