17-letter words containing d
- dangerous driving — the act of driving a motor vehicle in a manner that falls far below that expected of a competent and careful driver and hence puts the life of the driver and the lives of other road users at risk
- dante (alighieri) — (born Durante Alighieri) 1265-1321; It. poet: wrote The Divine Comedy
- daphnis and chloe — two lovers in pastoral literature, esp in a prose idyll attributed to the Greek writer Longus
- dark-complexioned — (of a person) having a dark complexion
- darwinian fitness — fitness (def 3).
- darwinian-fitness — health.
- data flow diagram — (programming) A graphical notation used to describe how data flows between processes in a system. Data flow diagrams are an important tool of most structured analysis techniques.
- data service unit — (communications) (DSU or "data service unit") A device used in digital transmission for connecting a CSU (Channel Service Unit) to Data Terminal Equipment (a terminal or computer), in the same way that a modem is used for connection to an analogue medium. A DSU provides a standard interface to a user's terminal which is compatible with modems and handles such functions as signal translation, regeneration, reformatting, and timing. The transmitting portion of the DSU processeses the customers' signal into bipolar pulses suitable for transmission over the digital facility. The receiving portion of the DSU is used both to extract timing information and to regenerate mark and space information from the received bipolar signal.
- data transmission — the act of sending data electronically over a communications network
- daughter language — a language that has evolved from another specified language.
- david copperfield — a novel (1850) by Charles Dickens.
- david livingstone — David, 1813–73, Scottish missionary and explorer in Africa.
- de facto standard — A widespread consensus on a particular product or protocol which has not been ratified by any official standards body, such as ISO, but which nevertheless has a large market share. The archetypal example of a de facto standard is the IBM PC which, despite is many glaring technical deficiencies, has gained such a large share of the personal computer market that it is now popular simply because it is popular and therefore enjoys fierce competition in pricing and software development.
- de-baathification — the process of removing the members and influence of the Ba'ath Party from public office in Iraq following the US-led invasion of 2003
- de-specialization — the act of specializing, or pursuing a particular line of study or work: Medical students with high student loans often feel driven into specialization.
- dead in the water — If you say that someone or something is dead in the water, you are emphasizing that they have failed, and that there is little hope of them being successful in the future.
- dead man's handle — a safety switch on a piece of machinery, such as a train, that allows operation only while depressed by the operator
- dead to the world — unaware of one's surroundings, esp fast asleep or very drunk
- dead tree edition — dead tree
- deadly nightshade — a poisonous Eurasian solanaceous plant, Atropa belladonna, having dull purple bell-shaped flowers and small very poisonous black berries
- death certificate — A death certificate is an official certificate signed by a doctor which states the cause of a person's death.
- death's-head moth — a European hawk moth, Acherontia atropos, having markings resembling a human skull on its upper thorax
- deathwatch beetle — a beetle, Xestobium rufovillosum, whose woodboring larvae are a serious pest. The adult produces a rapid tapping sound with its head that was once popularly supposed to presage death
- debrett's peerage — a list of the British aristocracy
- debt rescheduling — the process of changing the time frame or deadline for the repayment of debt, usually to ease the burden on the debtor
- decellularization — (biology, medicine) The loss of cells from tissue.
- deceptive cadence — a cadence consisting of a dominant harmony followed by a resolution to a harmony other than the tonic.
- deconstructionism — The belief in, or application of, deconstruction.
- deconstructionist — a philosophical and critical movement, starting in the 1960s and especially applied to the study of literature, that questions all traditional assumptions about the ability of language to represent reality and emphasizes that a text has no stable reference or identification because words essentially only refer to other words and therefore a reader must approach a text by eliminating any metaphysical or ethnocentric assumptions through an active role of defining meaning, sometimes by a reliance on new word construction, etymology, puns, and other word play.
- decontextualizing — to remove (a linguistic element, an action, etc.) from a context: decontextualized works of art displayed in museums.
- decriminalisation — (chiefly, British) Alternative form of decriminalization.
- decriminalization — to eliminate criminal penalties for or remove legal restrictions against: to decriminalize marijuana.
- dedifferentiating — Present participle of dedifferentiate.
- dedifferentiation — the reversion of the cells of differentiated tissue to a less specialized form
- deductible clause — a clause in an insurance policy stipulating that the insured will be liable for a specified initial amount of each loss, injury, etc., and that the insurance company will be liable for any additional costs up to the insured amount.
- deduction theorem — the property of many formal systems that the conditional derived from a valid argument by taking the conjunction of the premises as antecedent and the conclusion as consequent is true
- deductive tableau — (tool) A theorem proof system consisting of a table whose rows contain assertions or goals. Variables in assertions are implicitly universally quantified and variables in goals are implicitly existentially quantified. The declarative meaning of a tableau is that if every instance of every assertion is true then some instance of at least one of the goals is true.
- deep-frozen foods — foodstuffs that have been frozen for storage
- deepwater horizon — an offshore oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, 40 miles (64km) south-east off the coast of Louisiana, that suffered a massive oil spill following an explosion in April 2010
- defamiliarisation — (arts) The representation of objects anew, in a way that we do not recognize, or that changes our reading of them.
- defamiliarization — Art, Literature. a theory and technique, originating in the early 20th century, in which an artistic or literary work presents familiar objects or situations in an unfamiliar way, prolonging the perceptive process and allowing for a fresh perspective.
- defence mechanism — A defence mechanism is a way of behaving or thinking which is not conscious or deliberate and is an automatic reaction to unpleasant experiences or feelings such as anxiety and fear.
- defence secretary — the member of a government who is responsible for the country's armed forces
- defending counsel — a barrister who defends a client in a trial
- defense mechanism — A defense mechanism is a way of behaving or thinking which is not conscious or deliberate and is an automatic reaction to unpleasant experiences or feelings such as anxiety and fear.
- deferred sentence — a sentence that is postponed for a specific period to allow a court to examine the conduct of the offender during the deferment
- deficit financing — Deficit financing is the financing of government spending through borrowing rather than revenue.
- definite integral — the evaluation of the indefinite integral between two limits, representing the area between the given function and the x-axis between these two values of x
- definite sentence — (logic) A collection of definite clauses.
- degenerate matter — the highly compressed state of matter, esp in white dwarfs and neutron stars, supported against gravitational collapse by quantum mechanical effects