18-letter words that end in on
- debt consolidation — the process of taking out a new loan (often secured on one's property) in order to pay off a number of existing debts
- dechristianization — The act of dechristianizing; the systematic removal of Christianity or Christian elements.
- digital television — a television broadcasting technology in which signals are transmitted as a sequence of binary numbers.
- dimensionalisation — Alternative spelling of dimensionalization.
- dimensionalization — The process of dimensionalizing.
- direct examination — the first interrogation of a witness by the side that has called that witness.
- disability pension — a pension paid to people who are unable to continue to work because of a disability
- disproportionation — the simultaneous oxidation and reduction of a substance reacting with itself, thereby forming two dissimilar molecules, as 2C 2 H 4 →C 2 H 6 +C 2 H 2 .
- dissenting opinion — (in appellate courts) an opinion filed by a judge who disagrees with the majority decision of a case.
- distance education — education in which students receive instruction over the Internet, from a video, etc., instead of going to school.
- divine inspiration — insight provided by higher power
- doctype decoration — (humour) When a web author adds a doctype declaration but doesn't bother to write valid HTML.
- dodecadodecahedron — (geometry) A nonconvex polyhedron with twenty-four faces, thirty vertices, and sixty edges.
- donor insemination — a process which involves using sperm which has been voluntarily given for use in the insemination of another person
- driver's education — high-school driving classes
- eigendecomposition — (linear algebra) The factorization of a matrix into a canonical form, whereby the matrix is represented in terms of its eigenvalues and eigenvectors.
- electrocyclization — (organic chemistry) an electrocyclic reaction.
- electrodesiccation — The drying of tissue, and the prevention of bleeding, using a high-frequency electric current.
- emergent evolution — the doctrine that, in the course of evolution, some entirely new properties, such as life and consciousness, appear at certain critical points, usually because of an unpredictable rearrangement of the already existing entities
- energy consumption — amount of energy used
- enforcement action — action by a body or organization, esp a financial one, to make sure that its rules are being followed
- evapotranspiration — The process by which water is transferred from the land to the atmosphere by evaporation from the soil and other surfaces and by transpiration from plants.
- executive decision — a decision made by a person or group that has executive power
- fall-back position — an alternative plan
- far eastern region — former name of Khabarovsk.
- fatty degeneration — deterioration of the cells of the body, accompanied by the formation of fat globules within the diseased cells.
- fehling's solution — a blue solution of copper sulfate, Rochelle salt, and sodium hydroxide, used to test for the presence of a sugar, aldehyde, etc.
- filename extension — (filename extension) The portion of a filename, following the final point, which indicates the kind of data stored in the file - the file type. Many operating systems use filename extensions, e.g. Unix, VMS, MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows. They are usually from one to three letters (some sad old OSes support no more than three). Examples include "c" for C source code, "ps" for PostScript, "txt" for arbitrary text. Apart from informing the user what type of content the file holds, filename extensions are typically used to decide which program to launch when a file is "run", e.g. by double-clicking it in a GUI file browser. They are also used by Unix's make to determine how to build one kind of file from another. Compare: MIME type.
- fill someone in on — to provide someone with additional facts, details, etc. about
- fishing expedition — a legal proceeding mainly for the purpose of interrogating an adversary, or of examining his or her property and documents, in order to gain useful information.
- floating partition — a partition running parallel to and between two joists and resting on blocking between them.
- frequency function — probability density function (def 2).
- front organization — business: cover-up
- funeral procession — ceremonial cortège at a burial
- galvanic corrosion — Galvanic corrosion is a type of corrosion caused by bringing together two different metals, one of which corrodes more rapidly than it would alone while the other corrodes less rapidly.
- gamma distribution — a continuous two-parameter distribution from which the chi-square and exponential distributions are derived, written Gamma (α. β), where α and β are greater than zero, and defined in terms of the gamma function
- garbage collection — (programming) (GC) The process by which dynamically allocated storage is reclaimed during the execution of a program. The term usually refers to automatic periodic storage reclamation by the garbage collector (part of the run-time system), as opposed to explicit code to free specific blocks of memory. Automatic garbage collection is usually triggered during memory allocation when the amount free memory falls below some threshold or after a certain number of allocations. Normal execution is suspended and the garbage collector is run. There are many variations on this basic scheme. Languages like Lisp represent expressions as graphs built from cells which contain pointers and data. These languages use automatic dynamic storage allocation to build expressions. During the evaluation of an expression it is necessary to reclaim space which is used by subexpressions but which is no longer pointed to by anything. This reclaimed memory is returned to the free memory pool for subsequent reallocation. Without garbage collection the program's memory requirements would increase monotonically throughout execution, possibly exceeding system limits on virtual memory size. The three main methods are mark-sweep garbage collection, reference counting and copying garbage collection. See also the AI koan about garbage collection.
- gene amplification — an increase in the frequency of replication of a DNA segment.
- general confession — a prayer confessing sins
- general precession — the precession that results from both lunisolar precession and planetary precession; precession of the equinoxes.
- generating station — a power station
- genital mutilation — any type of cutting or removal of all or some of the genital organs, especially excision of the clitoris.
- gensym corporation — (company) A company that supplies software and services for intelligent operations management. Common applications include quality management, process optimisation, dynamic scheduling, network management, energy and environmental management, and process modelling and simulation. Their products include G2.
- germline insertion — the insertion of cloned genes into the egg or sperm cell of an organism, using a gene transfer technique, in order to perpetuate a desired trait in its descendants, as pest-resistance in a crop plant.
- give one's hand on — the terminal, prehensile part of the upper limb in humans and other primates, consisting of the wrist, metacarpal area, fingers, and thumb.
- green-backed heron — a small, American heron, Butorides striatus, having glossy green wings.
- have no hesitation — If you say that you have no hesitation in doing something, you are emphasizing that you will do it immediately or willingly because you are certain that it is the right thing to do.
- have one's ears on — the organ of hearing and equilibrium in vertebrates, in humans consisting of an external ear that gathers sound vibrations, a middle ear in which the vibrations resonate against the tympanic membrane, and a fluid-filled internal ear that maintains balance and that conducts the tympanic vibrations to the auditory nerve, which transmits them as impulses to the brain.
- heat of combustion — the heat evolved when one mole of a substance is burnt in oxygen at constant volume
- helicopter station — a place where helicopters are kept in readiness for use