16-letter words containing o, u, t
- depressurization — to remove the air pressure from (a pressurized compartment of an aircraft or spacecraft).
- descent function — If a recursive function is of the form f x = ... f (d x) ... then d is known as the descent function.
- deuterocanonical — of or constituting a second or subsequent canon; specif., designating certain Biblical books accepted as canonical in the Roman Catholic Church, but held by Protestants to be apocryphal
- diethyltoluamide — a liquid, C 12 H 17 NO, used as an insect repellent and resin solvent.
- digital computer — a computer that processes information in digital form.
- dinosaurs mating — (humour) The activity said to occur when yet another big iron merger or buy-out occurs; reflects a perception by hackers that these signal another stage in the long, slow dying of the mainframe industry. Also described as "elephants mating": lots of noise and action at a high level, with an eventual outcome in the somewhat distant future. In its glory days of the 1960s, it was "IBM and the Seven Dwarves": Burroughs, Control Data, General Electric, Honeywell, NCR, RCA, and Univac. Early on, RCA sold out to Univac and GE also sold out, and it was "IBM and the BUNCH" (an acronym for Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell) for a while. Honeywell was bought out by Bull. Univac in turn merged with Sperry to form Sperry/Univac, which was later merged (although the employees of Sperry called it a hostile takeover) with Burroughs to form Unisys in 1986 (this was when the phrase "dinosaurs mating" was coined). In 1991 AT&T absorbed NCR, only to spit it out again in 1996. Unisys bought Convergent Technologies in 1988 and later others. More such earth-shaking unions of doomed giants seem inevitable.
- diplomatic pouch — a sealed mailbag containing diplomatic correspondence that is sent free of inspection between a foreign office and its diplomatic or consular post abroad or from one such post to another.
- direct discourse — quotation of a speaker in which the speaker's exact words are repeated.
- direction number — the component of a vector along a given line; any number proportional to the direction cosines of a given line.
- discombobulating — Present participle of discombobulate.
- discombobulation — to confuse or disconcert; upset; frustrate: The speaker was completely discombobulated by the hecklers.
- discountenancing — Present participle of discountenance.
- discourteousness — The state or quality of being discourteous.
- disequilibration — to put out of equilibrium; unbalance: A period of high inflation could disequilibrate the monetary system.
- disputatiousness — The state or quality of being disputatious or argumentative; contentiousness.
- disqualification — an act or instance of disqualifying.
- distance modulus — a measure of the distance, r, of a celestial object too far away to show measurable parallax. It is given by m–M = 5 log(r/10), where m is its apparent magnitude (corrected for interstellar absorption) and M is its absolute magnitude
- distributionally — In a distributional manner.
- district council — the local ruling body of an urban or rural district.
- diverticulectomy — (surgery) The surgical removal of a diverticulum.
- divisional court — a high court in which at least two judges sit
- do business with — trade or deal with
- do-it-yourselfer — an advocate or enthusiast of do-it-yourself
- doctor's surgery — A doctor's surgery is the same as a doctor's office.
- document imaging — the process of converting paper documents into an electronic or digital format
- documentary film — factual, informative film
- double centering — a method of extending a survey line by taking the average of two foresights, one with the telescope direct and one with it inverted, made each time by transiting the telescope after a backsight.
- double indemnity — a clause in a life-insurance or accident-insurance policy providing for payment of twice the face value of the policy in the event of accidental death.
- double monastery — a religious community of both men and women who live in separate establishments under the same superior and who worship in a common church.
- double solitaire — a game of solitaire for two persons, each player usually having a pack and layout but pooling foundations with the opponent.
- double-breasting — the practice of employing nonunion workers, especially in a separate division, to supplement the work of higher-paid union workers.
- double-clutching — (of a bird) to produce a second clutch of eggs after the first has been removed, usually for hatching in an incubator.
- driver education — a course of study, as for high-school students, that teaches the techniques of driving a vehicle, along with basic vehicle maintenance, safety precautions, and traffic regulations and laws.
- drogue parachute — Also called drogue. a small parachute that deploys first in order to pull a larger parachute from its pack.
- drugstore cowboy — a young man who loafs around drugstores or on street corners.
- dual nationality — dual citizenship (def 1).
- dual personality — a disorder in which an individual possesses two dissociated personalities.
- dual-nationality — Also called dual nationality. the status of a person who is a legal citizen of two or more countries.
- dumont d'urville — Jules Sébastien César [zhyl sey-bas-tyan sey-zar] /ʒül seɪ basˈtyɛ̃ seɪˈzar/ (Show IPA), 1790–1842, French naval officer: explored South Pacific and Antarctic.
- dysfunctionality — (uncountable) The condition of being dysfunctional.
- eager evaluation — Any evaluation strategy where evaluation of some or all function arguments is started before their value is required. A typical example is call-by-value, where all arguments are passed evaluated. The opposite of eager evaluation is call-by-need where evaluation of an argument is only started when it is required. The term "speculative evaluation" is very close in meaning to eager evaluation but is applied mostly to parallel architectures whereas eager evaluation is used of both sequential and parallel evaluators. Eager evaluation does not specify exactly when argument evaluation takes place - it might be done fully speculatively (all redexes in the program reduced in parallel) or may be done by the caller just before the function is entered. The term "eager evaluation" was invented by Carl Hewitt and Henry Baker <[email protected]> and used in their paper ["The Incremental Garbage Collection of Processes", Sigplan Notices, Aug 1977. ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/hb/hbaker/Futures.html]. It was named after their "eager beaver" evaluator. See also conservative evaluation, lenient evaluation, strict evaluation.
- easter communion — the act of receiving communion in church on Easter Day - considered special because of the primacy of Easter among Christian festivals and because many people regard taking Easter communion as a basic token of membership of their church
- eastern european — relating to, situated in or coming from Eastern Europe
- educational park — a group of elementary and high schools, usually clustered in a parklike setting and having certain facilities shared by all grades, that often accommodates students from a large area.
- elburz mountains — a mountain range in N Iran, parallel to the SW and S shores of the Caspian Sea. Highest peak: Mount Demavend, 5671 m (18 606 ft)
- electroacoustics — a branch of acoustics that deals with the conversion of sound into electricity and vice versa, as in a microphone or a speaker
- electrohydraulic — Relating to electrohydraulics.
- electron capture — the transformation of an atomic nucleus in which an electron from the atom is spontaneously absorbed into the nucleus. A proton is changed into a neutron, thereby reducing the atomic number by 1. A neutrino is emitted. The process may be detected by the consequent emission of the characteristic X-rays of the resultant element
- electronic music — music: synthesized
- embourgeoisement — (chiefly UK) The taking-up of middle-class attitudes or values; bourgeoisification; the process of becoming affluent.