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18-letter words containing s, t, a, e, m

  • costume department — the department in a theatre or television company that is responsible for actors' costumes
  • cot death syndrome — the unexplained sudden death of an infant during sleep
  • counterculturalism — The counterculture movement or lifestyle.
  • court of st. james — the British royal court
  • creeping featurism — (jargon)   /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ (Or "feature creep") A systematic tendency to load more chrome and features onto systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed when originally designed. "The main problem with BSD Unix has always been creeping featurism." More generally, creeping featurism is the tendency for anything to become more complicated because people keep saying "Gee, it would be even better if it had this feature too". The result is usually a patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra little feature to help someone, and then another, and another, .... When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a cancer. Usually this term is used to describe computer programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the IRS 1040 form, and new cars. A similar phenomenon sometimes afflicts conscious redesigns; see second-system effect. See also creeping elegance.
  • crookes radiometer — a type of radiometer consisting of an evacuated glass bulb containing a set of lightweight vanes, each blackened on one side. The vanes are mounted on a vertical axis and revolve when light, or other radiant energy, falls on them
  • crystal microphone — a microphone that uses a piezoelectric crystal to convert sound energy into electrical energy
  • cumulative scoring — a method of scoring in which the score of a partnership is taken as the sum of their scores on all hands played.
  • customer relations — Customer relations are the relationships that a business has with its customers and the way in which it treats them.
  • customs and excise — Customs and Excise is a British government department which is responsible for collecting taxes on imported and exported goods. Compare Customs Service.
  • daytime television — television broadcasts that are shown during the daytime rather than in the evening
  • deanthropomorphism — the ridding of philosophy or religion of anthropomorphic beliefs and doctrines.
  • demand liabilities — the assets of a financial institution that are demandable by depositors
  • demorgan's theorem — (logic)   A logical theorem which states that the complement of a conjunction is the disjunction of the complements or vice versa. In symbols: not (x and y) = (not x) or (not y) not (x or y) = (not x) and (not y) E.g. if it is not the case that I am tall and thin then I am either short or fat (or both). The theorem can be extended to combinations of more than two terms in the obvious way. The same laws also apply to sets, replacing logical complement with set complement, conjunction ("and") with set intersection, and disjunction ("or") with set union. A (C) programmer might use this to re-write if (!foo && !bar) ... as if (!(foo || bar)) ... thus saving one operator application (though an optimising compiler should do the same, leaving the programmer free to use whichever form seemed clearest).
  • departmental store — a department store.
  • destruct mechanism — a mechanism that causes the destruction of a rocket or missile when activated
  • dia de los muertos — Day of the Dead.
  • diastereoisomerism — (chemistry) Any form of stereoisomerism other than enantiomerism.
  • diatomaceous earth — an unconsolidated form of diatomite
  • dicalcium silicate — a component of cement, 2CaO⋅SiO 2 , also used to neutralize acid soils.
  • dietary supplement — a substance taken in addition to what you eat in order to promote health
  • digital humanities — (used with a singular verb) the study of literature, philosophy, etc., as facilitated by computer technology or digital media: Digital humanities uses data analysis to find patterns in large bodies of text. the set of methodologies used in such scholarship.
  • dimensionalisation — Alternative spelling of dimensionalization.
  • dimensionalization — The process of dimensionalizing.
  • diplomatic service — diplomatic corps
  • diplomatic shuttle — a series of diplomatic visits to other states made by an official, such as an ambassador or envoy
  • disenfranchisement — to disfranchise.
  • disodium phosphate — sodium phosphate (def 2).
  • dispatch documents — documents sent with a parcel, etc, detailing information such as contents, delivery address, etc
  • domain name system — (networking)   (DNS) A general-purpose distributed, replicated, data query service chiefly used on Internet for translating hostnames into Internet addresses. Also, the style of hostname used on the Internet, though such a name is properly called a fully qualified domain name. DNS can be configured to use a sequence of name servers, based on the domains in the name being looked for, until a match is found. The name resolution client (e.g. Unix's gethostbyname() library function) can be configured to search for host information in the following order: first in the local hosts file, second in NIS and third in DNS. This sequencing of Naming Services is sometimes called "name service switching". Under Solaris is configured in the file /etc/nsswitch.conf. DNS can be queried interactively using the command nslookup. It is defined in STD 13, RFC 1034, RFC 1035, RFC 1591.
  • domestic appliance — a machine used for household tasks, for example, a washing machine, refrigerator, etc.
  • donor insemination — a process which involves using sperm which has been voluntarily given for use in the insemination of another person
  • east india company — the company chartered by the English government in 1600 to carry on trade in the East Indies: dissolved in 1874.
  • eastern hemisphere — the eastern part of the terrestrial globe, including Asia, Africa, Australia, and Europe.
  • eastern meadowlark — any of several American songbirds of the genus Sturnella, of the family Icteridae, especially S. magna (eastern meadowlark) and S. neglecta (western meadowlark) having a brownish and black back and wings and a yellow breast, noted for their clear, tuneful song.
  • economic sanctions — any actions taken by one nation or group of nations to harm the economy of another nation or group, often to force a political change
  • electrocardiograms — Plural form of electrocardiogram.
  • electroretinograms — Plural form of electroretinogram.
  • elementary student — primary school pupil
  • emmenthal (cheese) — a hard, pale-yellow Swiss cheese with a mild flavor and large holes
  • entrepreneurialism — The spirit or state of acting in an entrepreneurial manner.
  • establishmentarian — Adhering to, advocating, or relating to the principle of an established church.
  • ethical investment — an investment in a company whose activities or products are not considered by the investor to be unethical
  • ethnomusicological — Relating to or pertaining to ethnomusicology.
  • euclid's algorithm — (algorithm)   (Or "Euclidean Algorithm") An algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor (GCD) of two numbers. It relies on the identity gcd(a, b) = gcd(a-b, b) To find the GCD of two numbers by this algorithm, repeatedly replace the larger by subtracting the smaller from it until the two numbers are equal. E.g. 132, 168 -> 132, 36 -> 96, 36 -> 60, 36 -> 24, 36 -> 24, 12 -> 12, 12 so the GCD of 132 and 168 is 12. This algorithm requires only subtraction and comparison operations but can take a number of steps proportional to the difference between the initial numbers (e.g. gcd(1, 1001) will take 1000 steps).
  • examination script — a script with answers written on it by an examination candidate taking a written examination
  • extemporaneousness — The degree or property of being extemporaneous.
  • false imprisonment — the unlawful restraint of a person from exercising the right to freedom of movement.
  • family-size packet — a packet large enough to be suitable for a family
  • feeping creaturism — /fee'ping kree"ch*r-izm/ A deliberate spoonerism for creeping featurism, meant to imply that the system or program in question has become a misshapen creature of hacks. This term isn"t really well defined, but it sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. It is probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in the dark making their customary noises.
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