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21-letter words containing o, d, i, t

  • flip someone the bird — give someone the finger (see phrase under finger)
  • food conversion ratio — a ratio expressing the weight of food required to produce a unit gain in the live weight of an animal
  • foot-in-mouth disease — the habit of making inappropriate, insensitive, or imprudent statements.
  • foreign correspondent — a correspondent, as for a periodical, assigned to send back articles and news dispatches from a foreign country for publication.
  • forward compatibility — (jargon)   The ability to accept input from later versions of itself. Forward compatibility is harder to achieve than backward compatibility, since, in the backward case, the input format is know whereas a forward compatible system needs to cope gracefully with unknown future features. An example of future compatibility is the stipulation that a web browser should ignore HTML tags it does not recognise. See also extensible.
  • fragmentation grenade — a grenade with a heavy metal casing that shatters, on exploding, into fragments that travel at high speed and with great force.
  • fraudulent conversion — conversion committed with the intent to defraud
  • french fried potatoes — a more formal name for chips
  • functional dependency — (database)   Given a relation R (in a relational database), attribute Y of R is functionally dependent on attribute X of R and X of R functionally determines Y of R (in symbols R.X -> R.Y) if and only if each X in R has associated with it precisely one Y in R (at any one time). Attributes X and Y may be composite. This is very close to a function in the mathematical sense.
  • garbageabetical order — (humour)   1. The result of using an insertion sort to merge data into an unsorted list. 2. The state of any file or list that is supposed to be sorted, but is not.
  • gaussian distribution — normal distribution
  • gender disappointment — a feeling of depression or anxiety experienced by an expectant parent when the gender of the baby does not match his or her preference
  • get down on something — to procure something, esp in advance of needs or in anticipation of someone else
  • gideons international — an interdenominational lay society organized in 1899 to place Bibles in hotel rooms.
  • give a horse its head — to allow a horse to gallop by lengthening the reins
  • give sb the runaround — If someone gives you the runaround, they deliberately do not give you all the information or help that you want, and send you to another person or place to get it.
  • give someone the bird — to tell someone rudely to depart; scoff at; hiss
  • gold bullion standard — a gold standard in which gold is not coined but may be purchased at a fixed price for foreign exchange.
  • great victoria desert — a desert in SW central Australia. 125,000 sq. mi. (324,000 sq. km).
  • ground-effect machine — ACV (def 2).
  • have one's hands tied — the terminal, prehensile part of the upper limb in humans and other primates, consisting of the wrist, metacarpal area, fingers, and thumb.
  • higher-order function — (HOF) A function that can take one or more functions as argument and/or return a function as its value. E.g. map in (map f l) which returns the list of results of applying function f to each of the elements of list l. See also curried function.
  • host command facility — (operating system)   (HCF) Used to access IBM S/36 and AS/400 computers from a mainframe.
  • hydraulic accumulator — an apparatus in which gas, usually air, is used as a cushion or shock absorber in a hydraulic system.
  • hyperkinetic disorder — another name for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
  • hypothetico-deductive — pertaining to or governed by the supposed method of scientific progress whereby a general hypothesis is tested by deducing predictions that may be experimentally tested. When such a prediction is falsified the theory is rejected and a new hypothesis is required
  • i don't know how/what — You use I don't know in expressions which indicate criticism of someone's behaviour. For example, if you say that you do not know how someone can do something, you mean that you cannot understand or accept them doing it.
  • identical proposition — a proposition in which the subject and predicate have the same meaning, as, “That which is mortal is not immortal.”.
  • identification papers — documents that serve to establish someone's identity
  • identification parade — a group of persons including one suspected of having committed a crime assembled for the purpose of discovering whether a witness can identify the suspect
  • immediate constituent — one of the usually two largest constituents of a construction: The immediate constituents of He ate his dinner are he and ate his dinner; of ate his dinner are ate and his dinner; etc. Abbreviation: IC.
  • in (or out of) order — in (or not in) proper sequence or position
  • in a state of undress — If someone is in a state of undress, they do not have all their clothes on.
  • in bad/good/etc taste — If you say that something that is said or done is in bad taste or in poor taste, you mean that it is offensive, often because it concerns death or sex and is inappropriate for the situation. If you say that something is in good taste, you mean that it is not offensive and that it is appropriate for the situation.
  • in co-ordination with — If you do something in co-ordination with someone else, you both organize your activities so that you work together efficiently.
  • in good circumstances — (of a person) in a good financial situation
  • in someone's judgment — in someone's opinion
  • in-complete dominance — the appearance in a heterozygote of a trait that is intermediate between either of the trait's homozygous phenotypes.
  • inclusive disjunction — See under disjunction (def 2a).
  • indicated horse-power — the horsepower of a reciprocating engine as shown by an indicator record. Abbreviation: ihp, IHP.
  • indigenous australian — another name for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
  • indo-australian plate — a major tectonic division of the earth's crust, comprising India and the Australian continent and adjacent suboceanic basins (the Tasman, South Australian, Mid-Indian, Cocos, and Australian basins); separated from the Eurasian Plate by the Java Trench, from the Pacific Plate by the Tonga-Kermadec Trench, and from the African Plate by a series of mid-ocean ridges (the Carlsberg, Mid-Indian, and Southeast Indian ridges).
  • induced radioactivity — artificial radioactivity.
  • induction loop system — a system enabling partially deaf people to hear dialogue and sound in theatres, cinemas, etc, consisting of a loop of wire placed round the perimeter of a designated area. This emits an electromagnetic signal which is picked up by a hearing aid
  • industrial misconduct — behaviour by an employee that is considered to be negligent or irregular to such an extent that disciplinary action may be taken, usually by agreement between management and the employee's representatives
  • industrial psychology — the application of psychological principles and techniques to business and industrial problems, as in the selection of personnel or development of training programs.
  • industrial revolution — (sometimes initial capital letters) the totality of the changes in economic and social organization that began about 1760 in England and later in other countries, characterized chiefly by the replacement of hand tools with power-driven machines, as the power loom and the steam engine, and by the concentration of industry in large establishments.
  • international brigade — a military force that fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, consisting of volunteers (predominantly socialists and communists) from many countries
  • intravenous drug user — a drug addict who injects drugs (esp heroin) intravenously
  • isopropylideneacetone — mesityl oxide.
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