21-letter words starting with d
- discretionary account — an account in which the stockbroker is allowed complete control over the purchase and sale of securities on the customer's behalf.
- discriminant function — a linear function of measurements of different properties of an object or event that is used to assign the object or event to one population or another (discriminant analysis)
- disestablishmentarian — a person who favors the separation of church and state, especially the withdrawal of special rights, status, and support granted an established church by a state; an advocate of disestablishing a state church.
- disk operating system — DOS.
- displacement activity — a behavior performed out of its usual context and apparently irrelevant to the prevailing situation, as eating when an unknown individual approaches, tending to occur when appropiate behaviors, as attacking or fleeing, are in conflict or obstructed.
- display advertisement — an advertisement designed to attract attention by using devices such as conspicuous or elegant typefaces, graphics, etc
- disruptive technology — A disruptive technology is a new technology, such as computers and the Internet, which has a rapid and major effect on technologies that existed before.
- dissociative disorder — a mental disorder, as multiple personality, characterized by sudden temporary alteration in consciousness, identity, or motor behavior.
- distant early warning — a US radar detection system to warn of missile attack
- distinctiveness ratio — the ratio of the relative frequency of some event in a given sample to that in the general population or another relevant sample
- distinguished-looking — having a dignified and attractive appearance
- distributed processes — (DP) The first concurrent language based on remote procedure calls.
- distributed smalltalk — ["The Design and Implementation of Distributed Smalltalk", J. Bennett, SIGPLAN Notices 22(12):318-330 (Dec 1980)].
- distribution function — (of any random variable) the function that assigns to each number the probability that the random variable takes a value less than or equal to the given number.
- distributive property — Mathematics. the property that terms in an expression may be expanded in a particular way to form an equivalent expression.
- divine right of kings — the doctrine that the right of rule derives directly from God, not from the consent of the people.
- do/did you hear (me)? — If you say 'Do you hear?' or 'Did you hear me?' to someone, you are telling them in an angry or forceful way to pay attention to what you are saying.
- document object model — (hypertext, language, web) A W3C specification for application program interfaces for accessing the content of HTML and XML documents.
- double predestination — the doctrine that God has foreordained both those who will be saved and those who will be damned.
- double spanish burton — a tackle having one standing block and two running blocks, giving a mechanical advantage of five, neglecting friction.
- downhole safety valve — A downhole safety valve is a piece of safety equipment used inside a well, which isolates wellbore pressure and fluid if something bad happens.
- draft once reuse many — (jargon) (DORUM) Reusing parts of a document to produce parts of an entirely new document. The term normally refers to text documents but the practise is equally common in programming.
- drop in someone's lap — give someone the responsibility of
- drop the handkerchief — a children's game in which all the players but one stand in a circle facing inward, while that one player stealthily drops a handkerchief behind a player in the circle who must pursue and attempt to catch the one who dropped the handkerchief before the latter reaches the vacated place.
- duccio di buoninsegna — c1255–1319? Italian painter.
- dumfries and galloway — a region in S Scotland. 2460 sq. mi. (6371 sq. km).
- dusky seaside sparrow — a species of sparrow, Ammospiza maritima, existing in two subspecies, one (Cape Sable seaside sparrow) having dark olive-drab plumage with a lighter breast and underbelly, and the other (dusky seaside sparrow) having bold black and white markings on the breast and underbelly: the dusky seaside sparrow is almost extinct.
- dutch reformed church — of or relating to a Protestant denomination (Dutch Reformed Church) founded by Dutch settlers in New York in 1628 and renamed the Reformed Church in America in 1867.
- dwarf japanese quince — a low, shrubby, Japanese flowering quince, Chaenomeles japonica, of the rose family, having salmon-to-orange flowers and yellow fruit.
- dynamic data exchange — (language) (DDE, originally Dynamic Data Linking, DDL) A Microsoft Windows 3 hotlink protocol that allows application programs to communicate using a client-server model. Whenever the server (or "publisher") modifies part of a document which is being shared via DDE, one or more clients ("subscribers") are informed and include the modification in the copy of the data on which they are working.
- dynamic drive overlay — (storage, software) (DDO) Software to allow a system BIOS that does not support Logical Block Addressing to access drives larger than 528 MB. The alternatives are to update the system BIOS or install an EIDE controller card with a suitable on-board BIOS.