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20-letter words that end in e

  • disability insurance — insurance providing income to a policyholder who is disabled and cannot work.
  • discretionary income — money for luxuries
  • displacement tonnage — the number of long tons of water displaced by a vessel, light or load displacement being specified.
  • disruptive discharge — the sudden, large increase in current through an insulating medium resulting from complete failure of the medium under electrostatic stress.
  • distress merchandise — goods sold below the prevailing price in order to raise cash quickly or to meet some other financial emergency.
  • distributed database — A collection of several different databases that looks like a single database to the user. An example is the Internet Domain Name System (DNS).
  • distributed practice — learning with reasonably long intervals between separate occasions of learning
  • distributive lattice — (theory)   A lattice for which the least upper bound (lub) and greatest lower bound (glb) operators distribute over one another so that a lub (b glb c) == (a lub c) glb (a lub b) and vice versa. ("lub" and "glb" are written in LateX as \sqcup and \sqcap).
  • district court judge — a judge presiding over a lower court
  • diverticular disease — any disease of the colon involving the presence of diverticula
  • do someone a service — If you do someone a service, you do something that helps or benefits them.
  • documentary evidence — law: written
  • drunk mouse syndrome — (Also "mouse on drugs") A malady exhibited by the mouse pointing device of some computers. The typical symptom is for the mouse cursor on the screen to move in random directions and not in sync with the motion of the actual mouse. Can usually be corrected by unplugging the mouse and plugging it back again. Another recommended fix for optical mice is to rotate your mouse mat 90 degrees. At Xerox PARC in the 1970s, most people kept a can of copier cleaner (isopropyl alcohol) at their desks. When the steel ball on the mouse had picked up enough cruft to be unreliable, the mouse was doused in cleaner, which restored it for a while. However, this operation left a fine residue that accelerated the accumulation of cruft, so the dousings became more and more frequent. Finally, the mouse was declared "alcoholic" and sent to the clinic to be dried out in a CFC ultrasonic bath.
  • dry-bulb temperature — A dry-bulb temperature is the temperature of a dry surface in a vapor-gas environment.
  • dual in-line package — (hardware)   (DIL, DIP) The most common type of package for small and medium scale integrated circuits, with up to about 48 pins. The pins hang vertically from the two long edges of the rectangular package, spaced at intervals of 0.1 inch. The pins fit through holes in the circuit board to which they are soldered or into a socket.
  • eastern roman empire — the eastern of the two empires created by the division of the Roman Empire in 395 ad
  • effective computable — (theory)   A term describing a function for which there is an effective algorithm that correctly calculates the function. The algorithm must consist of a finite sequence of instructions.
  • effective resistance — the resistance to an alternating current, expressed as the ratio of the power dissipated to the square of the effective current.
  • eleanor of aquitaine — ?1122–1204, queen of France (1137–52) by her marriage to Louis VII and queen of England (1154–89) by her marriage to Henry II; mother of the English kings Richard I and John
  • electromagnetic wave — a wave of energy propagated in an electromagnetic field
  • electronic signature — electronic proof of a person's identity
  • environment variable — (programming, operating system)   A variable that is bound in the current environment. When evaluating an expression in some environment, the evaluation of a variable consists of looking up its name in the environment and substituting its value. Most programming languages have some concept of an environment but in Unix shell scripts it has a specific meaning slightly different from other contexts. In shell scripts, environment variables are one kind of shell variable. They differ from local variables and command line arguments in that they are inheritted by a child process. Examples are the PATH variable that tells the shell the file system paths to search to find command executables and the TZ variable which contains the local time zone. The variable called "SHELL" specifies the type of shell being used. These variables are used by commands or shell scripts to discover things about the environment they are operating in. Environment variables can be changed or created by the user or a program. To see a list of environment variables type "setenv" at the csh or tcsh prompt or "set" at the sh, bash, jsh or ksh prompt. In other programming languages, e.g. functional programming languages, the environment is extended with new bindings when a function's parameters are bound to its actual arguments or when new variables are declared. In a block-structured procedural language, the environment usually consists of a linked list of activation records.
  • examining magistrate — (in some countries with inquisitorial legal systems) a judge who investigates cases and decides whether there is a case to answer in court
  • explication de texte — a close textual analysis of a literary work
  • federal reserve note — a form of paper money issued by a Federal Reserve Bank.
  • field ion microscope — a device in which the atomic structure of the surface of a conductor is made visible by introducing helium gas into the device and applying a high voltage to ionize and accelerate the gas toward a fluorescent screen.
  • field-ion microscope — a device in which the atomic structure of the surface of a conductor is made visible by introducing helium gas into the device and applying a high voltage to ionize and accelerate the gas toward a fluorescent screen.
  • fight fire with fire — a state, process, or instance of combustion in which fuel or other material is ignited and combined with oxygen, giving off light, heat, and flame.
  • fight for one's life — Someone who is fighting for their life is making a great effort to stay alive, either when they are being physically attacked or when they are very ill.
  • financial aid office — an office at a US university that assesses students' financial needs and, if appropriate, offers them financial aid
  • finite state machine — (mathematics, algorithm, theory)   (FSM or "Finite State Automaton", "transducer") An abstract machine consisting of a set of states (including the initial state), a set of input events, a set of output events, and a state transition function. The function takes the current state and an input event and returns the new set of output events and the next state. Some states may be designated as "terminal states". The state machine can also be viewed as a function which maps an ordered sequence of input events into a corresponding sequence of (sets of) output events. A deterministic FSM (DFA) is one where the next state is uniquely determinied by a single input event. The next state of a nondeterministic FSM (NFA) depends not only on the current input event, but also on an arbitrary number of subsequent input events. Until these subsequent events occur it is not possible to determine which state the machine is in. It is possible to automatically translate any nondeterministic FSM into a deterministic one which will produce the same output given the same input. Each state in the DFA represents the set of states the NFA might be in at a given time. In a probabilistic FSM [proper name?], there is a predetermined probability of each next state given the current state and input (compare Markov chain). The terms "acceptor" and "transducer" are used particularly in language theory where automata are often considered as abstract machines capable of recognising a language (certain sequences of input events). An acceptor has a single Boolean output and accepts or rejects the input sequence by outputting true or false respectively, whereas a transducer translates the input into a sequence of output events. FSMs are used in computability theory and in some practical applications such as regular expressions and digital logic design. See also state transition diagram, Turing Machine.
  • firearms certificate — a certificate that entitles the holder to own and keep a firearm
  • florence nightingaleFlorence ("the Lady with the Lamp") 1820–1910, English nurse: reformer of hospital conditions and procedures; reorganizer of nurse's training programs.
  • fondue bourguignonne — a dish consisting of pieces of steak impaled on forks, cooked in oil at the table and dipped in sauces
  • for better for worse — whatever the subsequent events or changes may be
  • for future reference — If you keep information for future reference, you keep it because it might be useful in the future.
  • fort george g. meade — a military reservation in central Maryland, SW of Baltimore.
  • frame check sequence — (communications)   (FCS) The extra characters added to a frame for error detection and correction(?). FCS is used in X.25, HDLC, Frame Relay, and other data link layer protocols.
  • front-to-back engine — an engine in which the crankshaft is arranged front to back along the axis of the vehicle
  • frosting on the cake — a sweet mixture, cooked or uncooked, for coating or filling cakes, cookies, and the like; icing.
  • fundamental particle — elementary particle.
  • fundamental sequence — an infinite sequence, x 1 , x 2 , …, whose terms are points in Ek, in which there exists a point y such that the limit as n goes to infinity of xn = y if and only if for every ε>0, there exists a number N such that i > N and j > N implies | xi − xj |< ε. Also called Cauchy sequence, convergent sequence. Compare complete (def 10b).
  • gentleman of fortune — an adventurer.
  • geological timescale — any division of geological time into chronological units, whether relative (with units in the correct temporal sequence) or absolute (with numerical ages attached)
  • give someone the eye — the organ of sight, in vertebrates typically one of a pair of spherical bodies contained in an orbit of the skull and in humans appearing externally as a dense, white, curved membrane, or sclera, surrounding a circular, colored portion, or iris, that is covered by a clear, curved membrane, or cornea, and in the center of which is an opening, or pupil, through which light passes to the retina.
  • glucosamine sulphate — a compound used in some herbal remedies and dietary supplements, esp to strengthen joint cartilage
  • glyceryl monoacetate — acetin.
  • go from bad to worse — worsen
  • goldenhar's syndrome — a congenital disorder in which one side of the face is malformed, often with an enlargement of one side of the mouth. There may also be hearing loss, curvature of the spine, and mild retardation
  • great dividing range — a mountain range extending along the E coast of Australia: vast watershed region. 100 to 200 miles (160–320 km) wide.
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