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19-letter words containing u, d, c

  • diplomatic immunity — exemption from taxation, searches, arrest, etc., enjoyed by diplomatic officials and their dependent families under international law, and usually on a reciprocal basis.
  • directional coupler — (communications)   (tap) A passive device used in cable systems to divide and combine radio frequency signals. A directional coupler has at least three ports: line in, line out, and the tap. The signal passes between line in and line out ports with loss referred to as the insertion loss. A small portion of the signal power applied to the line in port passes to the tap port. A signal applied to the tap port is passed to the line in port less the tap attenuation value. The tap signals are isolated from the line out port to prevent reflections. A signal applied to the line out port passes to the line in port and is isolated from the tap port. Some devices provide more than one tap output line (multi-taps).
  • director of studies — a member of staff at an educational institution who has responsibility for overseeing the curriculum
  • directory enquiries — Directory enquiries is a service which you can telephone to find out someone's telephone number.
  • discovery procedure — any rigorous method by the application of which a grammar might be constructed from a corpus of utterances in a language; an algorithm leading from data to a formulation.
  • discretionary trust — a trust in which the beneficiaries' shares are not fixed in the trust deed but are left to the discretion of other persons, often the trustees
  • discriminated union — (theory)   The discriminated union of two sets A and B is A + B = {(inA, a) | a in A} U {(inB, b)| b in B} where inA and inB are arbitrary tags which specify which summand an element originates from. A type (especially an algebraic data type) might be described as a discriminated union if it is a sum type whose objects consist of a tag to say which part of the union they belong to and a value of the corresponding type.
  • discussion document — a document that puts forward some ideas or opinions that might form the basis of a discussion of a particular topic
  • disjunctive pronoun — an inflection of pronouns in some languages that is used alone or after a preposition, such as moi in French
  • distance university — a degree-granting institution operating wholly or mainly by correspondence courses for students not resident on or within commuting distance of the campus.
  • distillation column — a type of still fitted with interior baffles, used for fractional distillation. Compare still2 (def 1).
  • distinctive feature — a feature of the sound system of a language that serves as the crucial distinguishing mark between two phonemes, as the distinctive feature of voicing, which distinguishes b from p in English, or nasality, which distinguishes m from b and p.
  • domain architecture — (systems analysis)   A generic, organisational structure or design for software systems in a domain. The domain architecture contains the designs that are intended to satisfy requirements specified in the domain model. A domain architecture can be adapted to create designs for software systems within a domain and also provides a framework for configuring assets within individual software systems.
  • dose-response curve — a curve plotting the relationship between the dose of a drug administered and its pharmacological effect.
  • double counterpoint — invertible counterpoint using two transposable voices.
  • double-helical gear — herringbone gear.
  • draw the curtain on — to end
  • dry-bulk cargo ship — a ship that carries an unpackaged dry cargo such as coal or grain; bulk carrier
  • duplicating machine — a duplicator, especially one for making identical copies of documents, letters, etc.
  • dutchman's-breeches — a plant, Dicentra cucullaria, of the fumitory family, having long clusters of pale-yellow, two-spurred flowers.
  • early purple orchid — a Eurasian orchid, Orchis mascula, with purplish-crimson flowers and stems marked with blackish-purple spots
  • education committee — a committee that discusses the education of children in a particular local authority
  • educational adviser — a person who provides advice and training to teachers about teaching methods and educational policies
  • electroconductivity — Electrical conductivity.
  • endowment assurance — a form of life insurance that provides for the payment of a specified sum directly to the policyholder at a designated date or to his beneficiary should he die before this date
  • endowment insurance — Endowment insurance is a type of life insurance that pays a particular sum directly to the policyholder at a stated date, or to a beneficiary if the policyholder dies before this date.
  • euclidean algorithm — Euclid's Algorithm
  • executive president — a president in certain systems of government who possesses wide powers
  • factitious disorder — any of various syndromes, as Münchausen syndrome, characterized by physical or psychological symptoms intentionally produced by a person and under voluntary control.
  • financial ombudsman — any of five British ombudsmen: the Banking Ombudsman, set up in 1986 to investigate complaints from bank customers; the Building Society Ombudsman, set up in 1987 to investigate complaints from building society customers; the Insurance Ombudsman, set up in 1981 to investigate complaints by policyholders (since 1988 this ombudsman has also operated a Unit Trust Ombudsman scheme); the Investment Ombudsman set up in 1989 to investigate complaints by investors (the Personal Investment Authority Ombudsman is responsible for investigating complaints by personal investors); and the Pensions Ombudsman, set up in 1993 to investigate complaints regarding pension schemes
  • fluophosphoric acid — fluorophosphoric acid.
  • for crying out loud — exasperation
  • foundation subjects — the subjects studied as part of the National Curriculum, including the compulsory core subjects
  • friend of the court — amicus curiae.
  • functional database — (database, language)   A database which uses a functional language as its query language. Databases would seem to be an inappropriate application for functional languages since, a purely functional language would have to return a new copy of the entire database every time (part of) it was updated. To be practically scalable, the update mechanism must clearly be destructive rather than functional; however it is quite feasible for the query language to be purely functional so long as the database is considered as an argument. One approach to the update problem would use a monad to encapsulate database access and ensure it was single threaded. Alternative approaches have been suggested by Trinder, who suggests non-destructive updating with shared data structures, and Sutton who uses a variant of a Phil Wadler's linear type system. There are two main classes of functional database languages. The first is based upon Backus' FP language, of which FQL is probably the best known example. Adaplan is a more recent language which falls into this category. More recently, people have been working on languages which are syntactically very similar to modern functional programming languages, but which also provide all of the features of a database language, e.g. bulk data structures which can be incrementally updated, type systems which can be incrementally updated, and all data persisting in a database. Examples are PFL [Poulovassilis&Small, VLDB-91], and Machiavelli [Ohori et al, ACM SIGMOD Conference, 1998].
  • functional medicine — individualized medical care that recognizes the interactions between genetic and environmental factors and between the body's interconnected systems.
  • giraldus cambrensis — literary name of Gerald de Barri. ?1146–?1223, Welsh chronicler and churchman, noted for his accounts of his travels in Ireland and Wales
  • gloucester old spot — a hardy rare breed of pig, white with a few black markings, that originally lived off windfalls in orchards in the Severn valley
  • go round in circles — to engage in energetic but fruitless activity
  • go to rack and ruin — If you say that a place is going to rack and ruin, you are emphasizing that it is slowly becoming less attractive or less pleasant because no-one is bothering to look after it.
  • goldbach conjecture — an unproved theorem that every even integer greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two prime numbers.
  • grand duke nicholas — of Cusa [kyoo-zuh] /ˈkyu zə/ (Show IPA), 1401–1464, German cardinal, mathematician, and philosopher. German Nikolaus von Cusa.
  • gray-cheeked thrush — a North American thrush, Catharus minimus, having olive upper parts and grayish cheeks.
  • grievance procedure — the established series of steps to be taken in dealing with a grievance raised with an employer by an employee
  • handlebar moustache — a man's moustache having long, curved ends that resemble the handlebars of a bicycle.
  • hatfield-mccoy feud — a blood feud between two mountain clans on the West Virginia–Kentucky border, the Hatfields of West Virginia and the McCoys of Kentucky, that grew out of their being on opposite sides during the Civil War and was especially violent during 1880–90.
  • hound's-tooth check — a pattern of broken or jagged checks, used on a variety of fabrics.
  • household insurance — an arrangement in which you pay money to a company, and they pay money to you if your household goods are stolen or damaged
  • hudson river school — a group of American painters of the mid-19th century whose works are characterized by a highly romantic treatment of landscape, especially along the Hudson River.
  • human rights record — the facts that are known about the tendency of a country, regime, etc, to observe and protect human rights
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