23-letter words containing r, e, t, i, c, u
- court of first instance — a court in which legal proceedings are begun or first heard
- creative writing course — a course in which people are taught creative writing skills
- criminal justice system — the combination of courts and legal processes that deal with crime
- 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
- d'entrecasteaux islands — a group of volcanic islands in the Pacific, off the SE coast of New Guinea: part of Papua New Guinea. Pop: 49 167 (1990 est). Area: 3141 sq km (1213 sq miles)
- decision support system — a system in which one or more computers and computer programs assist in decision-making by providing information
- 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.
- descriptive linguistics — the study of the description of the internal phonological, grammatical, and semantic structures of languages at given points in time without reference to their histories or to one another
- 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).
- dichlorodiethyl sulfide — mustard gas.
- dichlorodifluoromethane — a colourless nonflammable gas easily liquefied by pressure: used as a propellant in aerosols and fire extinguishers and as a refrigerant. Formula: CCl2F2
- digital subscriber line — (communications, protocol) (DSL, or Digital Subscriber Loop, xDSL - see below) A family of digital telecommunications protocols designed to allow high speed data communication over the existing copper telephone lines between end-users and telephone companies. When two conventional modems are connected through the telephone system (PSTN), it treats the communication the same as voice conversations. This has the advantage that there is no investment required from the telephone company (telco) but the disadvantage is that the bandwidth available for the communication is the same as that available for voice conversations, usually 64 kb/s (DS0) at most. The twisted-pair copper cables into individual homes or offices can usually carry significantly more than 64 kb/s but the telco needs to handle the signal as digital rather than analog. There are many implementation of the basic scheme, differing in the communication protocol used and providing varying service levels. The throughput of the communication can be anything from about 128 kb/s to over 8 Mb/s, the communication can be either symmetric or asymmetric (i.e. the available bandwidth may or may not be the same upstream and downstream). Equipment prices and service fees also vary considerably. The first technology based on DSL was ISDN, although ISDN is not often recognised as such nowadays. Since then a large number of other protocols have been developed, collectively referred to as xDSL, including HDSL, SDSL, ADSL, and VDSL. As yet none of these have reached very wide deployment but wider deployment is expected for 1998-1999.
- digital subscriber loop — Digital Subscriber Line
- 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).
- 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
- eurovision song contest — an annual singing competition broadcast on live television and participated in by European countries who are members of the European Broadcasting Union. Each country submits one song and the other countries cast votes on the song to determine the winner.
- extravehicular activity — the act or an instance of floating and manoeuvring in space, outside but attached by a lifeline to a spacecraft
- extrinsic semiconductor — a semiconductor into which a doping agent has been introduced, giving it different electrical properties than the intrinsic semiconductor
- 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.
- 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
- german southwest africa — a former name of Namibia.
- have struck/hit paydirt — If you say that someone has struck paydirt or has hit paydirt, you mean that they have achieved sudden success or gained a lot of money very quickly.
- heterogeneous catalysis — Heterogeneous catalysis is catalysis in which the catalyst does not take part in the reaction that it increases.
- hire purchase agreement — an agreement between a seller and a buyer for the buyer to purchase something on hire purchase
- human rights campaigner — a person who campaigns for human rights
- 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.
- hypergeometric function — a function that is a solution to a hypergeometric equation.
- 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 your stockinged feet — wearing stockings or socks but no shoes
- initial public offering — An initial public offering is the first offering of stock when a company goes public.
- interfascicular cambium — cambium that develops between the vascular bundles.
- internal reconstruction — the hypothetical reconstruction of an earlier stage of a language or of some part of it, as its phonology, by deductions from irregularities in its present structure, as the reconstruction of a stage in English when certain instances of r were related to s in a systematic way by comparing the pair was:were to other pairs, as lose:forlorn.
- internet public library — (IPL) A project at the University of Michigan School of Information and Library Studies to provide an on-line, 24 hour public library, chaired by an assemblage of librarians and information industry professionals. The library aims to provide library services to a target audience estimated to number 1/4 of the entire American population by the end of the century. The Internet Public Library is scheduled to go on-line in March 1995. Among the first services will be on-line reference; youth services; user education; and professional services for librarians. Mailing list: [email protected]
- intrinsic semiconductor — an almost pure semiconductor to which no impurities have been added and in which the electron and hole densities are equal at thermal equilibrium
- invertible counterpoint — counterpoint in which the voices, while retaining their original form, may be interchanged above or below one another in any order.
- joint test action group —
- katmai new instructions — Streaming SIMD Extensions
- light and shade surface — (in architectural shades and shadows) a surface in a plane tangent to the parallel rays from the theoretical light source, treated as a shade surface.
- magnetic quantum number — the quantum number that designates the component of the orbital angular momentum in a fixed direction and that can assume all integral values between and including the orbital quantum number and the negative of the orbital quantum number.
- minimum security prison — A minimum security prison is a prison where there are fewer restrictions on prisoners than in a normal prison.
- multiple-risk insurance — insurance that covers several risks
- murder in the cathedral — a verse drama (1935) by T. S. Eliot.