16-letter words containing u, n, c, e, a
- denuclearization — The act or process of denuclearizing.
- dependent clause — a clause that cannot function syntactically as a complete sentence by itself but has a nominal, adjectival, or adverbial function within a larger sentence; subordinate clause (Ex.: She will visit us if she can.)
- 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
- discountenancing — Present participle of discountenance.
- 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
- document imaging — the process of converting paper documents into an electronic or digital format
- documentary film — factual, informative film
- double occupancy — a type of travel accommodation, as in a hotel, for two persons sharing the same room: The rate is $35 per person, double occupancy, or $65, single occupancy.
- 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.
- dual citizenship — Also called dual nationality. the status of a person who is a legal citizen of two or more countries.
- ducks and drakes — Also, duck and drake. a pastime in which flat stones or shells are thrown across water so as to skip over the surface several times before sinking.
- dutch guinea pig — a breed of two-tone short-haired guinea pig
- dutch new guinea — a former name of Irian Jaya.
- dynamic language — (language) (Dylan) A simple object-oriented Lisp dialect, most closely resembling CLOS and Scheme, developed by Advanced Technology Group East at Apple Computer. See also Marlais.
- 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
- 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.
- el camino bignum — (humour) /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ The road mundanely called El Camino Real, a road through the San Francisco peninsula that originally extended all the way down to Mexico City and many portions of which are still intact. Navigation on the San Francisco peninsula is usually done relative to El Camino Real, which defines logical north and south even though it isn't really north-south many places. El Camino Real runs right past Stanford University. The Spanish word "real" (which has two syllables: /ray-al'/) means "royal"; El Camino Real is "the royal road". In the Fortran language, a "real" quantity is a number typically precise to seven significant digits, and a "double precision" quantity is a larger floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen significant digits (other languages have similar "real" types). When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked what a long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on "real", he started calling it "El Camino Double Precision" - but when the hacker was told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it "El Camino Bignum", and that name has stuck. (See bignum).
- electric furnace — any furnace in which the heat is provided by an electric current
- 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
- elegiac quatrain — a poetic stanza consisting of four lines of iambic pentameter rhyming alternately.
- enriched uranium — uranium in which the proportion of the fissile isotope U-235 has been increased to make it more fissile
- enthusiastically — In an enthusiastic manner.
- equational logic — (logic) First-order equational logic consists of quantifier-free terms of ordinary first-order logic, with equality as the only predicate symbol. The model theory of this logic was developed into Universal algebra by Birkhoff et al. [Birkhoff, Gratzer, Cohn]. It was later made into a branch of category theory by Lawvere ("algebraic theories").
- escutcheon plate — a plate or shield that surrounds a keyhole, door handle, light switch, etc, esp an ornamental one protecting a door or wall surface
- european council — an executive body of the European Union, made up of the President of the European Commission and representatives of the member states, including the foreign and other ministers. The Council acts at the request of the Commission
- evacuation route — An evacuation route is a way to get out of a building if there is an emergency, such as a fire.
- exchange student — sb who studies abroad
- exclusion clause — (in a contract) something that serves to limit liabilities
- exemption clause — a clause in a contract that exempts one party from liability for something
- facial neuralgia — paroxysmal darting pain and muscular twitching in the face, evoked by rubbing certain points of the face.
- feeping creature — [feeping creaturism] An unnecessary feature; a bit of chrome that, in the speaker's judgment, is the camel's nose for a whole horde of new features.
- feminine caesura — a caesura occurring immediately after an unstressed or short syllable.
- feulgen reaction — a reaction in which an aldehyde combines with a modified Schiff's reagent to produce a purplish compound: used especially to test for the presence of DNA
- fibonacci number — a number in the Fibonacci sequence, each of which is the sum of the previous two
- fluorescent lamp — a tubular electric discharge lamp in which light is produced by the fluorescence of phosphors coating the inside of the tube.
- flying ambulance — an aircraft used to take sick or injured people to hospital
- franchise clause — a clause stipulating that the insured will be responsible for any loss not in excess of a stated amount, and the insurance company will be liable for full payment of the loss equaling or exceeding the amount up to the insured amount.
- functional water — water containing additives that provide extra nutritional value
- fundamentalistic — Fundamentalist.
- funeral director — a person, usually a licensed embalmer, who supervises or conducts the preparation of the dead for burial and directs or arranges funerals.
- gadsden purchase — a tract of 45,535 sq. mi. (117,935 sq. km), now contained in New Mexico and Arizona, purchased for $10,000,000 from Mexico in 1853, the treaty being negotiated by James Gadsden.
- garcia y iniguez — Calixto [kah-lees-taw] /kɑˈlis tɔ/ (Show IPA), 1839?–98, Cuban lawyer, soldier, and revolutionist.
- gas liquefaction — Gas liquefaction is the process of refrigerating a gas to a temperature that is below its critical temperature in order to form a liquid.
- gaudí (i cornet) — An‧to‧nio (ɑnˈtɔnjɔ ) ; änt^ōˈny^ō) 1852-1926; Sp. architect
- general factotum — a person who does all sorts of jobs; general assistant
- giant's causeway — a large body of basalt, unusual in displaying perfect columnar jointing, exposed on a promontory on the northern coast of Northern Ireland.
- gnu archive site — (body) The main GNU FTP archive is on gnu.org but copies ("mirrors") of some or all of the files there are also held on many other computers around the world. To avoid overloading gnu.org and the Internet you should FTP files from the machine closest to yours. Look for a directory like /pub/gnu, /mirrors/gnu, /systems/gnu or /archives/gnu.
- golden handcuffs — payments deferred over a number of years that induce a person to stay with a particular company or in a particular job
- golden parachute — an employment contract or agreement guaranteeing a key executive of a company substantial severance pay and other financial benefits in the event of job loss caused by the company's being sold or merged.
- grace-and-favour — (of a house, flat, etc) owned by the sovereign and granted free of rent to a person to whom the sovereign wishes to express gratitude