19-letter words containing n, a, d, i, r
- diffraction pattern — the phenomenon exhibited by wave fronts that, passing the edge of an opaque body, are modulated, thereby causing a redistribution of energy within the front: it is detectable in light waves by the presence of a pattern of closely spaced dark and light bands (diffraction pattern) at the edge of a shadow.
- dig one's own grave — If you say that someone is digging their own grave, you are warning them that they are doing something foolish or dangerous that will cause their own failure.
- digital electronics — (electronics) The implementation of two-valued logic using electronic logic gates such as and gates, or gates and flip-flops. In such circuits the logical values true and false are represented by two different voltages, e.g. 0V for false and +5V for true. Similarly, numbers are normally represented in binary using two different voltages to represented zero and one. Digital electronics contrasts with analogue electronics which represents continuously varying quantities like sound pressure using continuously varying voltages. Digital electronics is the foundation of modern computers and digital communications. Massively complex digital logic circuits with millions of gates can now be built onto a single integrated circuit such as a microprocessor and these circuits can perform millions of operations per second.
- digital linear tape — (storage) (DLT) A kind of magnetic tape drive originally developed by DEC and now marketed by Quantum. DLT drives implement the Digital Lempel Ziv 1 (DLZ1) compression algorithm in a combination of hardware and firmware. They use a popular chip by Stac (now hi/fn) to do the string searching. Counting, sorting and Huffman coding are done in firmware (with hardware support for the Huffman algorithm?). In April 1997 DLT drives can transfer 5 megabytes per second and can store 35 gigabytes on a single cartridge. Compression might roughly double these figures.
- dimethylnitrosamine — a yellow, water-soluble carcinogenic liquid, C 2 H 6 N 2 O, found in tobacco smoke and certain foods: known to be a potent carcinogen. Abbreviation: DMN, DMNA.
- direct grant school — (in Britain, formerly) a school financed by endowment, fees, and a state grant conditional upon admittance of a percentage of nonpaying pupils nominated by the local education authority
- direction indicator — aerial used in wireless communication
- directional coupler — (communications) (tap) A passive device used in cable systems to divide and combine radio frequency signals. A directional coupler has at least three ports: line in, line out, and the tap. The signal passes between line in and line out ports with loss referred to as the insertion loss. A small portion of the signal power applied to the line in port passes to the tap port. A signal applied to the tap port is passed to the line in port less the tap attenuation value. The tap signals are isolated from the line out port to prevent reflections. A signal applied to the line out port passes to the line in port and is isolated from the tap port. Some devices provide more than one tap output line (multi-taps).
- disciplinary action — punishment or caution
- discretionary trust — a trust in which the beneficiaries' shares are not fixed in the trust deed but are left to the discretion of other persons, often the trustees
- discriminated union — (theory) The discriminated union of two sets A and B is A + B = {(inA, a) | a in A} U {(inB, b)| b in B} where inA and inB are arbitrary tags which specify which summand an element originates from. A type (especially an algebraic data type) might be described as a discriminated union if it is a sum type whose objects consist of a tag to say which part of the union they belong to and a value of the corresponding type.
- disenfranchisements — Plural form of disenfranchisement.
- dispatch department — the department of an organization responsible for the dispatch of orders
- dispersion relation — the relationship between the angular frequency (ω;) of a wave and the magnitude of its wave vector (k). Thus the wave's speed is ω/k
- display advertising — display ads taken collectively.
- disseminated cancer — a cancerous tumour that has spread from the site of original growth to a secondary site
- distance university — a degree-granting institution operating wholly or mainly by correspondence courses for students not resident on or within commuting distance of the campus.
- distinctive feature — a feature of the sound system of a language that serves as the crucial distinguishing mark between two phonemes, as the distinctive feature of voicing, which distinguishes b from p in English, or nasality, which distinguishes m from b and p.
- diversified farming — the practice of producing a variety of crops or animals, or both, on one farm, as distinguished from specializing in a single commodity.
- diversional therapy — the structured use of leisure time in recreation and play as a form of or supplement to conventional therapy
- domain architecture — (systems analysis) A generic, organisational structure or design for software systems in a domain. The domain architecture contains the designs that are intended to satisfy requirements specified in the domain model. A domain architecture can be adapted to create designs for software systems within a domain and also provides a framework for configuring assets within individual software systems.
- dominance hierarchy — a system or set of relationships in animal groups that is based on a hierarchical ranking, usually established and maintained by behavior in aggressive encounters: one or a few members hold the highest rank and the others are submissive to those ranking higher and dominant to those ranking lower.
- draw in one's horns — one of the bony, permanent, hollow paired growths, often curved and pointed, that project from the upper part of the head of certain ungulate mammals, as cattle, sheep, goats, or antelopes.
- draw someone's fire — to attract the criticism or censure of someone
- draw the color line — to impose or accept the color line
- draw the curtain on — to end
- drawing-room comedy — a light, sophisticated comedy typically set in a drawing room with characters drawn from polite society.
- drill-down analysis — drill down
- drink the health of — to salute or celebrate with a toast
- dynamic translation — (architecture) A virtual machine implementation approach, used to speed up execution of byte-code programs. To execute a program unit such as a method or a function, the virtual machine compiles its bytecodes into (hardware) machine code. The translated code is also placed in a cache, so that next time that unit's machine code can be executed immediately, without repeating the translation. This technique was pioneered by the commercial Smalltalk implementation currently known as VisualWorks, in the early 1980s. Currently it is also used by some implementations of the Java Virtual Machine under the name JIT (Just In Time compilation).
- dynatron oscillator — type of oscillator
- east dunbartonshire — a council area of central Scotland to the N of Glasgow: part of Strathclyde region from 1975 until 1996: mainly agricultural and residential. Administrative centre: Kirkintilloch. Pop: 106 970 (2003 est). Area: 172 sq km (66 sq miles)
- educational adviser — a person who provides advice and training to teachers about teaching methods and educational policies
- elastic deformation — In elastic deformation a material changes shape when a stress is applied to it but goes back to its original state when the stress is removed.
- electrode potential — the potential difference developed when an electrode of an element is placed in a solution containing ions of that element
- electrohydrodynamic — (physics) Of or pertaining to electrohydrodynamics.
- electronic keyboard — a typewriter keyboard used to operate an electronic device such as a computer, word processor, etc
- end of transmission — (character) (EOT) The mnemonic for ASCII character 4.
- endowment insurance — Endowment insurance is a type of life insurance that pays a particular sum directly to the policyholder at a stated date, or to a beneficiary if the policyholder dies before this date.
- environmental audit — the systematic examination of an organization's interaction with the environment, to assess the success of its conservation or antipollution programme
- error-based testing — (programming) Testing where information about programming style, error-prone language constructs, and other programming knowledge is applied to select test data capable of detecting faults, either a specified class of faults or all possible faults.
- euclidean algorithm — Euclid's Algorithm
- expeditionary force — An expeditionary force is a group of soldiers who are sent to fight in a foreign country.
- exterior decoration — the painting of the outside of a building
- extradition warrant — a warrant for somebody's extradition
- fair-weather friend — a person who cannot be relied on in situations of hardship or difficulty
- fashion coordinator — a person in a department store or other establishment who coordinates activities centered upon or related to fashion, as fashion themes, shows, displays, and promotion.
- feynman, richard p. — Richard P. Feynman
- finds its/their way — If something finds its way somewhere, it comes to that place, especially by chance.
- first-sale doctrine — a legal principle allowing the purchaser of a lawfully made copy of a copyright-protected work to sell or give away that copy without permission but not to reproduce it.