23-letter words containing o, r, a, i, u
- creative writing course — a course in which people are taught creative writing skills
- criminal records bureau — (in England and Wales) a service offering employers and voluntary organizations access to police, health, and education records
- critique of pure reason — a philosophical work (1781) by Immanuel Kant.
- current-cost accounting — a method of accounting that values assets at their current replacement cost rather than their original cost
- cut sb's umbilical cord — If you say that one person, organization, or country has cut its umbilical cord with another, you mean that they have done something that makes them more independent.
- dark-field illumination — illumination of the field of a microscope from the side so that the specimen is viewed against a dark background
- department of education — the department of the U.S. federal government that administers federal programs dealing with education: created in 1979, largely by transfer from part of the former Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Abbreviation: ED.
- deterministic automaton — (theory) A finite-state automaton in which the overall course of the computation is completely determined by the program, the starting state, and the initial inputs. The class of problems solvable by such automata is the class P (see polynomial-time algorithm).
- dichlorodifluoromethane — a colourless nonflammable gas easily liquefied by pressure: used as a propellant in aerosols and fire extinguishers and as a refrigerant. Formula: CCl2F2
- dictionary of computing — Free On-line Dictionary of Computing
- digital subscriber loop — Digital Subscriber Line
- dionysius of alexandria — ("the Great") a.d. c190–265, patriarch of Alexandria 247?–265?.
- discontinuous variation — variation in phenotypic traits in which types are grouped into discrete categories with few or no intermediate phenotypes. Compare continuous variation.
- dishonourable discharge — dismissal from the US armed forces by a court martial as a result of serious misconduct
- disjunctive normal form — (DNF) A logical formula consisting of a disjunction of conjunctions where no conjunction contains a disjunction. E.g. the DNF of (A or B) and C is (A and C) or (B and C).
- dual sensory impairment — the condition of being affected by sight and hearing loss
- earthquake-proof design — Earthquake-proof design is design which will not be badly damaged by earthquakes or tsunamis.
- eating your own dogfood — eating one's own dogfood
- education correspondent — a journalist who reports news in the field of education or teaching
- electronic surveillance — use of electronic devices to spy, observe
- encapsulated postscript — (EPS) An extension of the PostScript graphics file format developed by Adobe Systems. EPS is used for PostScript graphics files that are to be incorporated into other documents. An EPS file includes pragmas (special PostScript comments) giving information such as the bounding box, page number and fonts used. On some computers, EPS files include a low resolution version of the PostScript image. On the Macintosh this is in PICT format, while on the IBM PC it is in TIFF or Microsoft Windows metafile format.
- entrance qualifications — academic requirements
- european monetary union — the agreement between members of the European Union to establish a common currency. The current participating members are Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain
- ferric ammonium oxalate — a green, crystalline, water-soluble, synthetically produced powder, (NH 4) 3 Fe(C 2 O 4) 3 ⋅3H 2 O, used chiefly in the manufacture of blueprint paper.
- fifth marquis lansdowne — Henry Charles Keith, 5th Marquis of Lansdowne, Lansdowne, 5th Marquis of.
- fish in troubled waters — any of various cold-blooded, aquatic vertebrates, having gills, commonly fins, and typically an elongated body covered with scales.
- friction reducing agent — A friction reducing agent is an additive used to reduce friction exerted downhole on tools and pipes.
- frictional unemployment — those people who are in the process of moving from one job to another and who therefore appear in the unemployment statistics collected at any given time
- function graph language — (language) (FGL) The machine language for the AMPS (Applicative Multi-Processing System) proposed by Robert Keller, Gary Lindstrom and Suhas Patil at the University of Utah.
- functional requirements — (specification) What a system should be able to do, the functions it should perform. This term is used at both the user requirements analysis and software requirements specifications phases in the software life-cycle. An example of a non-functional requirement is an initialisation sequence incorporated into the software that is specific to a given customer.
- fundamental interaction — any of the four basic interactions that occur in nature: the gravitational, electromagnetic, strong, and weak interactions
- gamma-aminobutyric acid — GABA.
- garbage in, garbage out — (humour) (GIGO) /gi:'goh/ Wilf Hey's maxim expressing the fact that computers, unlike humans, will unquestioningly process nonsensical input data and produce nonsensical output. Of course a properly written program will reject input data that is obviously erroneous but such checking is not always easy to specify and is tedious to write. GIGO is usually said in response to lusers who complain that a program didn't "do the right thing" when given imperfect input or otherwise mistreated in some way. Also commonly used to describe failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or imprecise data. The expansion "Garbage In, Gospel Out" is an ironic comment on the tendency to put excessive trust in "computerised" data.
- german southwest africa — a former name of Namibia.
- give (or get) a tumble — to give (or get) some favorable or affectionate notice, attention, etc.
- give something a rub-up — to smooth or polish something
- growing-equity mortgage — a type of mortgage under which the interest rate is fixed but monthly payments increase annually to include more of the principal, so that the mortgage can be paid off in about half the conventional term.
- guest relations manager — A guest relations manager at a hotel is responsible for the relationships that the hotel has with its guests and the way in which it treats them.
- guillain-barre syndrome — an uncommon, usually self-limited form of polyneuritis, occurring after a viral illness or immunization and manifested by loss of muscle strength, loss of or altered sensation and sometimes paralysis.
- hang out your/a shingle — If you hang out your shingle or hang out a shingle, you start your own business.
- hermit of st. augustine — a member of an order of mendicant friars, founded in 1256.
- heterogeneous catalysis — Heterogeneous catalysis is catalysis in which the catalyst does not take part in the reaction that it increases.
- horsehair-blight fungus — a fungal parasite, Marasmius equicrinis, that causes a disease of certain tropical plants, especially tea.
- hortense de beauharnais — Beauharnais, Eugénie Hortense de.
- hypergeometric equation — a differential equation of the form, (x 2 − x) d 2 y / d 2 x + [(a+b +1) x−c ] dy/dx + abx =0, where a, b, and c are arbitrary constants.
- immigration authorities — the authorities or official government bodies who regulate laws regarding immigration and immigrants
- immunological tolerance — the absence of antibody production in response to the presence of antigens, usually as a result of previous exposure to the antigens
- in favour/out of favour — If someone or something is in favour, people like or support them. If they are out of favour, people no longer like or support them.
- in the arms of morpheus — sleeping
- in the nature of things — If you say that something is in the nature of things, you mean that you would expect it to happen in the circumstances mentioned.