17-letter words containing r, h, d
- hairy-tailed mole — a blackish North American mole, Parascalops breweri, having a short, hairy tail.
- half-breadth plan — a diagrammatic plan of one half of the hull of a vessel divided lengthwise amidships, showing water lines, stations, diagonals, and bow and buttock lines.
- half-round chisel — a cold chisel with a semicircular cutting edge used for making narrow channels
- hall of residence — Halls of residence are buildings with rooms or flats, usually built by universities or colleges, in which students live during the term.
- hammer and sickle — the emblem of the Soviet Union, adopted in 1923 and consisting of an insignia of a hammer with its handle across the blade of a sickle and a star above.
- hammered dulcimer — dulcimer (sense 1)
- handicap register — a list of the disabled people in its area that a local authority had a duty to compile under the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970
- hard nut to crack — a dry fruit consisting of an edible kernel or meat enclosed in a woody or leathery shell.
- hard rock geology — (loosely) of or relating to igneous or metamorphic rocks, as in mining (hard-rock mining) and geology (hard-rock geology)
- hard-shelled clam — quahog
- hard-shelled crab — a crab, esp. an edible sea crab, before it has shed its hard shell
- hardware platform — a group of compatible computers that can run the same software.
- hardware register — (hardware, system administration) (Or "hardware log") A list of all hardware, both internal and external, that is attached to a particular computer.
- haroun-al-raschid — Harun al-Rashid.
- have no words for — to be incapable of describing
- hawking radiation — the emission of particles by a black hole. Pairs of virtual particles in the intense gravitational field around a black hole may live long enough for one to move outward when the other is pulled into the black hole, making it appear that the black hole is emitting radiation
- head of the river — any of various annual rowing regattas held on particular rivers
- headline-grabbing — A headline-grabbing statement or activity is one that is intended to attract a lot of attention, especially from the media.
- heart of darkness — a short novel (1902) by Joseph Conrad.
- helen keller mode — 1. State of a hardware or software system that is deaf, dumb, and blind, i.e. accepting no input and generating no output, usually due to an infinite loop or some other excursion into deep space. (Unfair to the real Helen Keller, whose success at learning speech was triumphant.) See also go flatline, catatonic. 2. On IBM PCs under MS-DOS, refers to a specific failure mode in which a screen saver has kicked in over an ill-behaved application which bypasses the very interrupts the screen saver watches for activity. Your choices are to try to get from the program's current state through a successful save-and-exit without being able to see what you're doing, or to re-boot the machine. This isn't (strictly speaking) a crash.
- henry cabot lodge — Henry Cabot, 1850–1924, U.S. public servant and author: senator 1893–1924.
- herbaceous border — A herbaceous border is a flower bed containing a mixture of plants that flower every year.
- heritage industry — an industry that manages the historical sites, buildings, and museums in a particular place, with the aim of encouraging tourism
- hermaphrodite rig — jackass rig.
- heterochlamydeous — (of a plant) having a perianth consisting of distinct sepals and petals
- hiring and firing — the authority to hire or fire staff, or the act of doing this
- historical method — the process of establishing general facts and principles through attention to chronology and to the evolution or historical course of what is being studied.
- hit over the head — to strike on the head
- hoare powerdomain — powerdomain
- hold one's breath — If you say that someone is holding their breath, you mean that they are waiting anxiously or excitedly for something to happen.
- hold one's ground — the solid surface of the earth; firm or dry land: to fall to the ground.
- hold one's horses — a large, solid-hoofed, herbivorous quadruped, Equus caballus, domesticated since prehistoric times, bred in a number of varieties, and used for carrying or pulling loads, for riding, and for racing.
- hold sb to ransom — If you say that someone is holding you to ransom in British English, or holding you for ransom in American English, you mean that they are using their power to try to force you to do something which you do not want to do.
- holding operation — a plan or procedure devised to prolong the existing situation
- homeland security — national defence
- hornblende schist — a variety of schist containing needles of hornblende that lie in parallel planes.
- horseradish sauce — a piquant sauce made from horseradish root, vinegar, etc, and traditionally eaten in Britain with roast beef
- hot-and-sour soup — a spicy Chinese soup made with pork, chicken, beans, vinegar, etc., served hot
- hotel limo driver — A hotel limo driver is the person whose job it is to drive the hotel limo.
- hottentot's bread — elephant's-foot.
- household cavalry — (in Britain) cavalry units forming part of the ceremonial guard of the monarch.
- household rubbish — the unwanted things and waste material produced in the running of a household, such as used paper, empty tins and bottles, and waste food
- humpbacked bridge — A humpbacked bridge or humpback bridge is a short and very curved bridge with a shape similar to a semi-circle.
- hundred-percenter — a completely patriotic, sometimes jingoistic person.
- hurler's syndrome — a medical condition characterized by physical deformity and mental deficiency
- hybrid fiber coax — (networking) (HFC) A kind of physical connection used in networks for audio, video, and data. DVB (Digital Video Broadcast) is used in Europe and DOCSIS is used in N America.
- hydraulic circuit — a circuit through which water or another liquid, instead of electric current, flows, but which otherwise operates in the same way as an electric circuit
- hydrochloric acid — a colorless or faintly yellow, corrosive, fuming liquid, HCl, used chiefly in chemical and industrial processes.
- hydroelectrically — Using hydroelectric power.
- hydrofluoric acid — a colorless, fuming, corrosive liquid, HF, an aqueous solution of hydrogen fluoride, used chiefly for etching glass.