(Click here for bottom)

DJ
Disc Jockey.

Possibly patterned on this is the, um, jocular usage ``desk jockey.'' As it happens, desk and disc are cognates, borrowed from Latin indirectly and then directly. For details see the fisk entry.

D. J.
District Judge.

[column]

D. J.
Doctor Juris. Latin, `Doctor of Law.'

DJ
Dow Jones.

dj
Dust Jacket. A garment for a book. The first papier couture. Important determinant in resale value of hardcover. Intended just to protect the cover, dust jackets were originally just plain paper. Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) suggested to the publisher of his Hunting of the Snark, that the title be printed on the book's dust jacket, and the rest is history which I don't know. It's also called a book jacket, but it is not abbreviated BJ nearly as often as DJ. Why is this? Your guess is as good as mine (unless it isn't obvious to you).

When B.J. Friedman's first novel was published, he ``was invited to come say hello to the staff at Simon & Schuster'' (his publisher). After being greeted by an old and befuddled Mr. Simon, he was surrounded by a group of young editors who had nice things to say about his jacket.

``Thank you,'' [said Bruce Jay Friedman]. ``My mother bought it for me at Saks. She was heartbroken that I hadn't become a theatrical press agent. She'd been told that they all have big homes in Rockaway. But she wanted me to be properly dressed all the same.''

[The article from which this text is lifted, and a copy of the cover, can be found here.]

These events occurred in the early 1960's, when it was still common for adult men to have their clothes bought for them by women. I think that's much less common today. Today, on the other hand, authors (including adult male authors, okay?) don't normally design or even have much say in choosing their book jackets. Sometimes the cover will depict characters from the book, and the depictions will be impossibly different from the descriptions in the book. I've also seen ``marital arts'' used evidently unironically (i.e., as an error for ``martial arts''). The artsy types who do covers are often somewhat weak at spelling.

It's also become quite standard for book jackets and even the hard covers of books to bear the words ``a novel.'' This is especially helpful at library book sales, where book sorting can be rather haphazard. (Most of the larger library book sales I've been to have not been mostly library-book sales, but sales mostly of donated books.)

DJ
Delete to the end of present line, and remove carriage return so line continues with text of current next line. Vi usage.

.dj
(Domain name code for) Djibouti. A little city-state on the north end (Red Sea) of the border between Ethiopia (or Eritrea now?) and Somalia.

DJD
Degenerative Joint Disease. Duh-juh-juh-duh. Sounds grating.

djebel
One transliteration of an Arabic word for `mountain.' It's also transliterated djibel, jebel, gebel, and jabal. (With uncharacteristic restraint, the OSPD4 accepts only djebel and jebel. TWL98 and SOWPODS follow suit.)

The fault (if multiple spellings are a fault) is not just in the imprecision of English spelling. It also happens that different Arabic dialects do different things with the initial consonant.

DJF
December, January, February. The three months of ``meteorological Winter.'' I saw DJF in various papers on weather and climate before I encountered the term ``meteorological Winter,'' but then I didn't study the thing systematically.

The AHD4 has this as its first definition for the word Winter: ``The usually coldest season of the year, occurring between autumn and spring, extending in the Northern Hemisphere from the winter solstice to the vernal equinox, and popularly considered to be constituted by December, January, and February.''

That definition manages to confuse three things: ``meteorological Winter'' (DJF), ``astronomical Winter'' (an underhanded retronym for the solstice-to-equinox period, used by the kind of people who would use the term ``meteorological Winter''), and the coldest period, or coldest three months, of the year. Some future iteration of this entry will sort all that out. For now I just want to publish the glossary page. Cf. MAM, JJA, SON.

DJO
Digital Journal of Ophthalmology. ``The DJO is a peer-reviewed ophthalmic journal dedicated to the dissemination of ophthalmic information over the World Wide Web to offer rapid publication, convenience and accessibility, full color photos and full motion videos to practicing ophthalmologists.''

.dk
(Domain name code for) Denmark. I asked Per if there were any words in Danish that he felt the need for in English. He couldn't think of any. Therefore, everyone should speak English. That way, we can avoid the problem of Copenhagen. The pronunciation of this word completely in Danish exposes non-Danes to serious oral and dental risks. My own health care plan doesn't even cover this. People are starting to move into the suburbs to avoid the problem.

It's even worse with words that contain the letter dee, which is pronounced by having your epiglottis do the unvoiced watusi.

The situation of Danish with respect to Norwegian and Swedish is similar to that of Portuguese with respect to Spanish (Castillian). Educated readers of any Iberian Romance language can understand most of a text in any other Iberian Romance language, just as the Scandinavian languages are mutually understandable in writing. Portuguese speakers can understand Spanish fairly easily, but their language has a rich phonology that subverts a Spanish speaker's efforts to recognize cognates. Danes similarly can understand Norwegians and Swedes, while the latter generally need a couple of months' study to understand Danish. (Overall, I should say that the Iberian Romance languages are not as similar to each other as the North Germanic languages of Scandinavia are to each other.)

Niels Bohr, a national scientific hero in Denmark, was known for delivering scientific addresses in his own approximation of the local language. It was said that he didn't speak any foreign languages, just different dialects of Bohrish. He and his son Aage wrote a major text on nuclear physics (in English). Now there is a third Bohr generation of physicist at work.

Some of the sayings famously attributed to Niels Henrik David Bohr (Nicholas Baker), he himself attributed to his own father. One of these was the maxim that there are two sorts of truths -- ordinary truths, whose opposites are false, and profound ones whose opposites may also be profound truths.

Note that the opposite of a profound truth is explicitly excluded from being an ordinary truth. Without this exclusion, some profound truths would also be ordinary falsehoods. If Aristotle had known about this, he probably would have called it the axiom of half of the excluded middle.

One of Niels Bohr's favorite sayings was ``Never express yourself more clearly than you can think.'' Most people would have difficulty manifesting that problem; Bohr specialized in implementing the solution. It's no wonder he was a hero in Denmark.

Ariadne, ``The European and Mediterranean link resource for Research, Science and Culture,'' has a page of national links for Denmark. The territory of Denmark is basically the Jutland peninsula, and -- oh yeah, Greenland.

Here's the Danish page of an X.500 directory.

The noun Danish refers to any sweet pastry, preferably with white icing and cinnamon, and two to go, thanks. Cf. Evita entry.

(BTW, you know that famous mermaid statue? I think a bunch of years ago she was temporarily decapitated by vandals.)

In Spring 2002, the European Commission conducted the ``Eurobarometer 57'' survey, sampling at least 1,000 in each of its member countries (except in Luxembourg, where, probably to avoid sampling some people twice, only 600 people were surveyed). The main finding of Eurobaromometer 57 was that Europeans are a bunch of sourpusses. A key existential question was on ``overall life satisfaction'' (which I will abbreviate OLS here):

On the whole, are you very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied, or not at all satisfied with the life you lead? Would you say you are very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied, or not at all satisfied?

The EU15 average percentage answering ``very satisfied'' was 21%. (Amazingly, it seems they actually went to the trouble of weighting it properly -- by population instead of raw sample.) Harris conducted a parallel US study, a telephone survey of 1010 adults, called between April 10 and April 15, 2003. The results were generally more positive on all questions, with 57% answering ``very satisfied'' to the OLS question. Of course, the European average hid a broad range of national variation. Exactly one of the EU15 countries scored higher than the US on OLS: Denmark, at 64%. (The next highest was Netherlands, 45%.)

Another Eurobarometer poll, conducted by phone between October 8 and 16, 2003, asked questions mostly regarding Iraq (500 sampled per country, results weighted by population). An EU15 average of 44% favored sending peacekeeping troops to Iraq. In Denmark the figure was 77%. (This probably exceeds the percentage of Americans who favored having US troops in Iraq by then.) A majority of Danes believed that the US-led invasion of Iraq was justified; in the other 14 members a majority believed it was unjustified (EU15 average 68%).

DK
Diels Kranz. In 1903, Hermann Diels published a monumental collection of the fragments (mostly bits of material quoted later in antiquity) of the pre-Socratic philosophers (Fragmente der Vorsokratiker). It went through a great many editions, with revisions or additions in 1906 (2/e) and 1912 (3/e). The fourth edition in 1922 was a reprint, but the edition of 1934-37 involved substantial revision by Walther Kranz. As I understand it, the sixth through ninth editions (1951 or 1952 to 1960) are reprints.

DK
Dining Kitchen. Wasei eigo abbreviation for dining room with a kitchen. Cf. OL.

DK
Donna Karan. A dress designer.

DK
Don't Know. Code or abbreviation for a class of survey reply. It seems a shame that this isn't used as some sort of logo or slogan or something -- a succinct assertion of agnosticism of one variety or another. Cf. DK/NA.

DKK
Danish (.dk) Crown (Kroner).

DKMC
Dull Knife Memorial College, located in Lame Deer, Montana. I suppose it's just my cultural reference frame, but these names sound a down beat to me. I'm all for the September 2001 change of name to Chief Dull Knife College (any substantive information we gather about the college will be at that linked entry).

The practice of constructing given names from pairs of common nouns, or from a noun modified by an adjective, is apparent in Native American names, but seems to be a world-wide reflex. It was once the standard practice for constructing Indo-European names, but the words that formed the names evolved while the names tended to become fixed or to evolve independently, so people no longer recognize that Sigmund, say, means `defender of victory,' or Robert `bright fame.' As the examples suggest, however, the common names (at least those of whose etymologies I am aware) tend to be more positive. The Romans deviated from the usual practice of I-E peoples and even, in the cognomen innovation, from other Italic peoples. Their naming practices are discussed at the tria nomina entry.

I asked an Indian woman I know about this, and she mentioned someone she knows whose Indian name is ``Killing Water'' (this turns out to be a not-too-unusual name). I remarked that it is a somewhat ambiguous name, and she replied that he is a somewhat ambiguous person. So there you are.

DK/NA
Don't Know / No Answer. Code or abbreviation for a class of survey reply. It might be a laconic summary of the situation described at the FPO entry. Cf. DK.

DK/NS
Don't Know / Not Sure. Code or abbreviation for a class of survey reply.

DKNY
Donna Karan New York. Underwear and other soft goods. Oh yes, and now they will feature books as well. ``Books that elicit an emotional response.'' (Not an exact quote, but close enough.) It looks like Oprah will have company wherever she's going in the next life.

DKO, dKO, d-ko
Double Knock-Out. I'm not aware that there's much use for this initialism in boxing. Once you're knocked out, that's it, it's over. But in biology it's useful. It means that two genes are knocked out, and the DKO typically refers to an animal in which the two genes have been knocked out.

DKSME
International Conference on Data and Knowledge Systems for Manufacturing and Engineering.

DKW
Dampfkraftwagen. German for `steam-power vehicle.' A company founded in 1915 by the Dane Skafte Rasmussen in Zschopau (in the German state of Saxony), in 1916 it rolled out its first steam car. Steam cars didn't catch on in a big way in Germany any more than they did anywhere else. In 1922, DKW brought out its first light motorcycle (125 cc), called ``Das kleine Wunder'' [`the small wonder']. I assume the company meant for people to identify that as the or an expansion of DKW at some point. I don't know how completely the old expansion was buried, immediately, but see below. DKW became a part of Auto Union (based in Zwickau) in 1933 and went out of business altogether in 1956. More at the Audi entry.

I asked my mom, who fled Germany in 1938 (as a child, 71 years ago), if she recalled a motorcycle called das kleine Wunder. She didn't, but when I mentioned DKW -- ohh, that was a major company! Cars and mostly heavy vehicles like trucks. She thought it stood for ``deutsche Kraftwerk'' or perhaps just naturally assumed it. I'll try to investigate this further, if it doesn't require any work.

DL
David Letterman. A professional comedian with his own show weeknights on CBS, which makes his top-ten research available on a need-to-know basis.

Here are my favorite top-tens from before 1996:

[Football icon]

DL
Defensive Lineman. A position in American football.

DL
Diffusion-Limited.

Processes occurring at a surface, and utilizing a reactant or adsorbate brought to the surface by a fluid (as in oxidation of a Si surface and in vapor- and liquid-deposition) tend to operate in one of two asymptotic regimes: diffusion-limited and reaction-limited. If the deposition process at the growth surface is rapid, then the fluid phase adjacent to the growing surface becomes depleted of (at least one) reactant, and the growth rate is controlled by the rate at which the reactant is replenished by diffusion to the surface. This is DL growth. If the fluid is well stirred or if the deposition stage is slow, then depletion of reactants from the fluid near the surface is not important, and growth is reaction-limited.

DL
Digital Librar{ y | ies }. The plural form is the name of a conference. See D-lib.

DL
Disabled List. In major league baseball, there are two disabled lists: fifteen-day and sixty-day: In all cases, the determination that a player is injured must be made by a physician. Players on the n-day DL (either value of n) cannot return to the active list for n days. However, it is possible to put a player on the disabled list retroactively, so the inactive period begins after the last time he played, even though he was then on the active list.

DL
Distance Learning. Correspondence courses of various sorts, nowadays usually using something faster than snailmail. Contrasted with F2F (face-to-face) learning. See next entry.

The Department of Classics at the University of Florida offers DL courses. One of their webpages explains (or doesn't explain) the following: ``The university requires proof of immunization of all students. Yes, even distance students. Don't ask why, just fill the form out asap or suffer grievously!''

DL
Distributed Learning. Courses taught over video, live or not. Also other forms of Distance Learning (also DL).

DL
Distribution List.

dl, D/L
DownLoad. Perform an electronic file or data transfer from a general distribution source to a user-controlled site, as for example from a server to a client. German has the calque herunterladen.

DLA
Defense Logistics Agency.

DLA
Dental Laboratories Association. According to this page it's ``a professional body for dental laboratory owners in the UK. Currently [text copied January 2005] the Association has around 1000 members, over 50 of whom are affiliates. It is estimated that members of the DLA are responsible for over 80% of the dental laboratory services in the UK.''

DLA
Diffusion-Limited Aggregation. In three dimensions, this produces cluster masses that scale approximately as the 1.75 power of the cluster radius.

DLB
Dictionary of Literary Biography.

DLBI
Device-Level Burn-In.

DLC
Data Link Control.

DLC
Democratic Leadership Council. An association of Democratic party moderates formed in 1985. Its leading elected officials at the beginning were Democratic senators Samm Nunn (Ga.), Lawton Chiles (Fl.), and Charles Robb (Va.), and Rep. Dick Gephardt (Mo.), with experienced staffers Al From and Will Marshall. The DLC was created in the wake of Walter Mondale's campaign for the presidency in 1984 (Mondale had been stomped by incumbent Pres. Ronald Reagan). The idea of the DLC was to pull the Democratic party rightward toward the center. (Cf. CDM, created following the 1972 defeat, and Third Way, following the 2004 defeat). The DLC promoted the idea of an early Super-Tuesday primary to enhance the clout of conservative Southern states within the presidential nomination process.

Gephardt, the first leader of the DLC, joined in the middle of his own drift to the left. He had been pro-life as late as 1984, but by the time he began his first presidential campaign in 1987, he was pro-choice. Perhaps that is necessary for anyone who wants to win the Democratic primaries. But he ran on a protectionist platform in the 1988 primaries and stopped being identified with that ``new Democrat'' faction of the party. Four years later, however, the DLC had a candidate of superb political skills. With a little help from third-party odd-ball H. Ross Perot, Clinton won in 1992. Some missteps to the left were punished by a Republican takeover of the House in the midterm elections of 1994, and after that Clinton stayed ``new Democrat.'' During the second Clinton administration, I wrote the following completely ingenuous statement:

Of course, now every Democrat (incumbent), pretty much, is a ``new [i.e. centrist] Democrat.''
Yeah, that ignored the Congressional Black Caucus and some Californians and such, but it wasn't far off the image.

In the 106th Congress (the one that began in 1999) Gephardt was the senior House Democrat. Approaching the Y2K elections, he was one of the two obvious and leading contenders for the Democratic Presidential nomination (Vice President Al Gore, the eventual nominee, was the other). As the ranking House member of his party, he was the likely House Speaker if the Democrats took back the House in those elections. He apparently preferred those odds (a priori) and stayed out of the presidential race. At least he kept his job.

So Gore was the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2000 campaign. It's hard to criticize him as having been out of touch with the country's mood, given that he did in fact win a majority of the popular vote. But his campaign nevertheless represented something of a repudiation of what many had regarded as Clinton's policy legacy. Gore campaigned as a more leftist populist, moving the image of the Democratic party leftward.

To some extent, his campaign represented a reaction to problems imposed on him. During the primary season, Gore had faced opposition on his left from former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley, and perhaps he moved left in reaction to that challenge. But no one is surprised, and few remember, if a candidate refashions his positions after the primaries to make them attractive to a broader range of voters. Still, a campaign needs a message (preferably one per news cycle).

Clinton had involved Gore in actual government more than most presidents have involved their VP's, and Gore might have run on Clinton's record, wringing prosperity for all its considerable political value. But Clinton inspired widespread loathing, in large measure due to the sordid affair of the sexual exploitation of White House intern Monica Lewinsky. So promising more of Clinton-Gore was a problematical campaign approach; Gore chose as his running mate Connecticut's Senator Joe Lieberman, whose most prominent qualification was his early and forceful denunciation of Clinton's affair. (That is, Lieberman had been the first prominent officeholder in Clinton's own party to rebuke Clinton for acting like JFK and LBJ, in the pants department, although he expressed this somewhat differently.) At the Democratic convention, Gore staged a spontaneous I-really-really-love-my-wife-unlike-some-people-we-know event.

In 2000, Gore chose Senator Lieberman as his running mate in significant part to distance himself from Clinton. Granted this distance was not along a policy axis, yet it is ironic that by the time of the next presidential campaign, Lieberman was really the most faithful remaining representative of the centrist legacy of Bill Clinton, such as it was. Lieberman remained centrist even as 9/11 and the Iraq invasion (strongly supported by the DLC) polarized the country. In fall 2003, he was the only Democrat in the race for the presidential nomination who was willing to defend the invasion of Iraq (with reservations, of course). Gore, in the meantime, confirmed his shift and ended up endorsing Dean just before Dean's campaign peaked and floundered. Lieberman pulled out of the Iowa caucuses and never really contended. (Iowa Democrats are somewhat more leftist than those in the next few states selecting convention delegates, and caucuses reflect the more activist segment of a party, which in both Democratic and Republican cases leans further from center than the bulk of the party.) Lieberman's campaign never got traction and he dropped out. For more and later on Lieberman, see

There's a precedent of sorts for the DLC in something that was called the Democratic Advisory Council. After Dwight D. Eisenhower twice defeated Democratic candidate Adlai E. Stevenson (1952 and 1956), party chairman Paul M. Butler created the advisory council in defiance of Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson (respectively Speaker of the House and Senate Majority leader in the Democrat-controlled Congress). The council was a group of ``wise men'' from the Roosevelt-Truman years, and some promising governors and junior legislators. They formulated the economic and social policies that became known as the New Frontier platform, which John F. Kennedy ran and won with in 1960.

Here's something interesting in 2005: Marshall Wittmann, a former aide to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), is serving as a fellow at the DLC.

It's September 2007, and I'm just popping back in at this entry to record the DLC's slide. Harold Ford, Jr., was a blue dog Democrat in the House representing the Memphis area (9th congressional district of Tennessee) in 2006 when he ran for an open Senate seat (Republican Bill Frist, a physician who was then Senate majority leader, was retiring; he still thought he was going to run for President in 2008). He lost the election (48% to Republican Bob Corker's 51%). The following January 25, he was named chairman of the DLC. At the DLC's annual meeting in Nashville on July 30, 2006, he said ``Some people say we've lost our standing, but if there ever was a time when the country needed the DLC... it's now.'' He may be right, but the leading Democratic candidates all skipped the DLC event to attend the second annual Kos thing.

DLC
Diamond-Like Carbon. Ha! CVD-deposited carbon intended to form epitaxial diamond crystal. Approach is attractive due to some favorable properties of the semiconductor diamond, but so far deposition is not very crystalline and Raman spectra more closely resemble those of graphite.

DLC
Digital Loop Carrier[s].

DLCCA
Diffusion-Limited Cluster-Cluster Aggregation. In three dimensions, this produces cluster masses that scale approximately as the 2.5 power of the cluster radius.

DLCI
Data Link Connection Identifier.

DLD
Dark Line Defect.

DLD
Data Link Decoder.

DLD
DeadLine Date.

DLDM
Distorted Liquid Drop Model (LDM). This overview page of nucleus models has a link to an extended technical description (dvi).

[column]

DLE
Diccionario latín-español. Spanish: `Latin-Spanish Dictionary.' Very much under construction. In fact, I've heard so little about that project that I think it's been abandoned. (This might be just as well, at least until they get a more distinctive initialism, because lexicographically, the initialism DLE usually stands for something else in Spanish.) There's a Greek effort (DGE), originally parallel to the DLE effort, which has made great progress and has already published into the epsilons.

I'm not sure what the exact title of the DLE was supposed to be. It could use either latín (language name) or latino (adjective).

Our library has part 1 of a Diccionario latino-español that is already available (formal title Dictionarium latino-hispanicum) by Elio Antonio de Nebrija, based on preliminary studies by Germán Colón y Amadeu-J. Soberanas. It's not an original edition, however. It's a 1979 reprint of the edition that was published at Salamanca in 1492. Yes, Colón is the Spanish version of Columbus (which is really just the Latin translation of the real name. For a tiny bit of information about the name Germá (apparently a transliterated version of the name Herman), see the SN. Yes really the SN entry. Run along now.

Back already? Okay, now read about Salamanca (see under Cortes).

DLE
Diccionario de la lengua española. `Dictionary of the Spanish Language.' If not otherwise specified, this probably refers to the DRAE, the one published by the Real Academia Española (`Spanish Royal Academy') and -- gasp -- freely available for searching on line!

DLF
Digital Library Federation. ``...a consortium of libraries and related agencies that are pioneering in the use of electronic-information technologies to extend their collections and services.''

Also called NDLF.

DLG
Devilish Little Grin. USENET newsgroup acronym. One poster saves two seconds of typing, thousands of lurkers waste hundreds of man-hours guessing.

DLI
Defense Language Institute. Officially, but less commonly in actual usage, the DLIFLC.

DLI
Direct Liquid Injection. Mass-flow control that measures out a rate of liquid flow and vaporizes or atomizes it for a smooth flow into a gas phase reaction. Liquid is not injected directly as such.

DLI
Digital Library Initiative. A project at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), to develop an information infrastructure to effectively search technical documents (mostly scientific and engineering) on the Internet. As of mid-1998, they were constructing ``a large-scale, multi-publisher (54), full-text testbed of scientific literature using SGML documents and bit-mapped images [and] ... evaluating its effectiveness for thousands of users on thousands of documents.''

D-lib
Electronic Magazine of Digital Library Research. Mirrors in the UK and in Australia.

DLIFLC
Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. Afaik, everyone calls it the Defense Language Institute, which seems to have been its official name for a long time, and abbreviates the name as DLI. I suppose they might have started a Defense Language Institute Domestic Language Center. (Actually, they do provide ESL classes at at least one of their campuses.)

D Link
Diagonal Link. SS7 term. One of three possible kinds of link interconnecting two mated pairs of signal transfer points (STP's).

DLJ
Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette. An investment banking firm based in New York City.

DLL
Delay-Line Loop. Used to feed back and make clocks or multipliers.

DLL
Dynamic Link Library.

DLM
Double-Layer Metal[lization] (microelectronic fabrication technology).

DLP
Double-Layer Polysilicon (microelectronic fabrication technology).

DLR, dlr.
DeaLeR.

DLR
Deutsche (Forschungsanstalt für) Luft- und Raumfahrt (e.V.) (`German [Research Establishment for] Aero- and Astronautics'; official English ``German Aerospace Research Establishment.''). Here's a mirror of the English page.

DLR
Docklands Light Railway, Ltd. These docklands are apparently the enclosed docks of the Isle of Dogs, serving the city of London from 1802 until the 1960's, when containerization shifted cargo traffic to coastal ports that could accommodate larger ships. In 1982, the British government designated the Isle of Dogs an ``Enterprise Zone'' with tax and other incentives for economic revitalization. The DLR was built starting in 1984 and began service in 1987.

The Isle of Dogs is smaller than the Isle of Man. Donne wrote that no man is an island, but the Isle of Dogs is a peninsula in an oxbow of the Thames. (Actually, such a peninsula itself may also be called an oxbow. As the name here indicates, it is also sometimes called an isle or island. The way rivers evolve, naturally or with human assistance, oxbows often become islands and vice versa.) Because of the hydraulics of meander, the deepest part of a river is close to the inside of the oxbow. Hence docks (and quays).

``Docks'' sounds an awful lot like ``dogs'' -- the difference being that the first uses an unvoiced consonant pair /ks/ and the second uses voiced consonants /gz/. Hmmm. Well, no. The Isle of Dogs takes its name from the fact that the king's hounds used to be kept there. It was a peninsula then too.

The name of the Canary Islands comes from the Romans' name for the largest island -- Canaria. According to Pliny, who probably just read it somewhere else, it was named after large feral dogs the Romans found there (from the Latin canis, `dog'). Eventually, the name was applied to the entire group. In the local language, Guanche, the islands were called Tamaran, translated or interpreted as `land of the strong.' You know, tamar- and canar- are very similar -- the tee and cee are differently-articulated but similar-sounding stop consonants, and em and en are similar nasals -- perhaps.... Aaah, after the docks/dogs thing came to grief, I better leave the speculation to professionals like Plinius.

The Canary name also came to be applied to a species of small yellow finches found on the islands.

Île aux Chats, in the province of Québec, is the name of a settlement and an island on the Rivière du Nord, a couple of kilometers north of Carillon, about 30 km west of Montréal. An island renowned for cats and birds -- now that would be something.

DLS
De La Salle Collegiate High School. A college-prep boys' school in Warren, Michigan.

DLS
De La Salle High School. A Catholic boys' school in Concord, California. (That's about 15 mi. east of Berkeley and Oakland. It's also 3 mi. NE of Walnut Creek, one of six ``satellite production'' sites where the NY Times prints its ``national edition.'' As of mid-2008, these are the locations of the other five: Chicago; Lakeland, Florida; Torrance, California; Austin, Texas; and Lorain, Ohio. On April 3 of 2008, an agreement with the Tacoma News Tribune was announced, to start production in Tacoma, Washington, in the autumn. In March 2008, the weekday circulation of the NYT averaged 1,007,550, and the Sunday paper averaged 1,629,650 copies. Call me a buzzard or a ghoul, but I'm just waiting for the gray lady to turn a couple of shades paler and collapse. Crossing below the million threshold, which ought to happen in 2008, will probably be a good milestone. In February 2008, the corresponding daily and Sunday circulation averages for the NYT national edition were 127,800 and 232,000. Now what boring thing were we talking about before we got onto this interesting tangent? Oh yes...) DLS was founded in 1965 ``in the Lasallian tradition of the Christian Brothers.'' It has about 1000 students, and an impressive 98% or so of its graduates go on to college.

DLS's ``sister school,'' Carondelet High School, also in Concord, was also founded in 1965, ``by the Sisters [see?] of St. Joseph of Carondelet at the request of [the aptly named] Bishop Floyd Begin, first Bishop of Oakland [Oakland was his see, see?]. In the tradition of their congregation, the Sisters responded to the needs of the Church by establishing the only Catholic secondary school for the young women of Contra Costa County.''

DLS
De La Salle High School. A coed Catholic school in New Orleans. It opened its doors as a boys' high school in 1949.

DLS
DeLaSalle High School in Minneapolis. Originally a commercial school that was opened as the DeLaSalle Institute in October 1900. In 1971, the by-then high school turned coed when the diocese closed the all-girl St. Anthony of Padua High School in northeast Minneapolis. Although the initialism DLS is widely used attributively in names of the school's groups, ``De'' is the school's affectionate nickname, and they have a too-cutesy practice of emphasizing or capitalizing both the letters DE when they occur initially in school-related names.

DLS
De La Salle Institute. A four-year college-prep high school in Chicago. It was chartered in 1888 as a degree-granting two-year commercial school for boys. In 2002 it opened a ``Young Women's Campus'' (Lourdes High School -- doubtless named after the daughter of Madonna).

DLS
The Demosthenian Literary Society. An institution at UGA.

DLS
DownLoadable Sound. MIDI-related code that I know nothing about.

DLSC
Defense Logistics Service Center. Sounds like the place where the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) goes for its tune-ups.

DLS2
DownLoadable Sound 2. The next stage in DLS. But I haven't even learned DLS. I'm falling further behind!

DLT
Device-Level Test.

DLT
Digital Linear Tape.

DLTS
Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy. Used in the range of about 77K to 400K, for determining densities of traps as a function of ionization activation energy, as well as their capture cross sections.

DLU
Dependent Logical Unit. The word dependent is a big clue that this term applies to a host-centric system rather than a client-server system. In fact, a DLU is an LU controlled by an SNA host system.

DLV
DeLaVirdin. An NNRTI used in the treatment of AIDS.

DLVO
Derjaguin, Lanfau, Verwey, and Overbeek (model).

DLZ
Deutsche Literaturzeitung.

DM
Defense Minister.

DM
Delta Modulation.

DM
Deutsche Mark. There was a plan to have a national campaign featuring the monetary advice of Claudia Schiffer to convince Germans to adopt some shakey European common currency. Maybe the revelation of the meretricious nature of her affair with David Copperfield got that canned. Anyway, before the euro could be put in place, the various EU members were supposed to stabilize their economies by, among other things, bringing their national government budget deficits below 3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Among EU members, even Germany hadn't done this when I first wrote this entry, but in 1995 the US budget deficit was 2.3% of US GDP, and it was headed down (it crossed zero in 1998).

As it happened, the European economy picked up and a lot of countries did switch starting in 1999 (q.v.).

DM
Diabetes Mellitus. General term for a few diseases popularly called simply diabetes.

All forms of the disease involve some problem with insulin, which enables blood sugar (glucose) to enter cells. There are two principal types:

I -
or Juvenile-onset, or insulin-dependent diabetes (IDDM).

May first appear as early as the first month of infancy, and typically appears before or during adolescence. The current preferred name is IDDM, however, because onset may be delayed into the thirties, forties and beyond (albeit with decreasing likelihood).

In IDDM, the pancreas fails to produce insulin, or enough insulin. The disease is currently believed to be an autoimmune disorder: the body fails to recognize certain cell surface proteins in the pancreas as ``self,'' and destroys the insulin-producing cells (``beta cells'') found in regions of the pancreas called ``islets of Langerhans.''

[Alpha cells make and release glucagon; delta cells make the hormone somatostatin, believed to regulate the alpha and beta cells. The gamma cells just sit around and look busy, I guess.] Insulin-dependent diabetics require daily insulin injections to survive. Not just hyperglycemia but hypoglycemia becomes a problem (there's a fine region between too little and too much insulin). Moreover, after a few years there may be the additional difficulty that the overt initial reactions to low blood sugar become muted.

II -
or Adult-onset, or non-insulin-dependent diabetes (NIDDM).

This is by far the more common form of diabetes (95% of US cases -- 13 to 14 million). Usually appears after age forty. Onset is slow and often goes unnoticed for a long time. There is a significant heritability of this disease, or for the predisposition to the disease, but a number of other factors play a rôle.

Type-II diabetes does not result from destruction of beta cells or from underproduction of insulin. Instead it has to do with ``insulin resistance'' -- a problem with insulin consumers rather than producers. At the cellular level, for incompletely understood reasons, glucose transport becomes less efficient. Insulin levels are typically elevated, and appropriate treatment does not (initially) include insulin injections. However, after years of type-II diabetes, the ability of the pancreas to produce insulin can diminish and lead to type-I (insulin-dependent) diabetes.

Also,
GDM
- for Gestational Diabetes Mellitus

Elevated blood sugar in pregnant women, may occur during the second half of the pregnancy. Glucose levels return to normal post partum in 95% of cases, but GDM is an indication for type II.

The CDC has a ``Diabetes Public Health Resource.'' Diabetes.com would seem like another reasonable place to learn more. See also the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International (JDF), ... Gee, this must be a pretty important disease.

The name diabetes mellitus comes via Latin from Greek: diabetes (`passing through') + mellitus (`honey'). Hippocrates stressed the careful noting of all symptoms that the technology of his time could detect; diabetics' urine tasted sweet. As we now understand, the sweetness comes from the high blood sugar (glucose), some of which is excreted instead of being properly metabolized in cells. A possible indicator of diabetes is excessive thirst (which I suppose arises from the extra workload on the kidneys, but I don't know). More along these lines can be found at the Be entry.

DM
Differential Mode. Vide Differential Amplifier.

DM
Digital Medievalist. ``DM is an on-line, open access, peer-reviewed journal devoted to the use of digital tools and media in the study of medieval culture. Its inaugural issue was published in April, 2005.''

DM
Dipole Moment.

DM
Distance Measurement (avionics).

.dm
(Domain name code for) Dominica. First time most of us ever heard of it was when they contributed a token presence, as part of the ``multinational-force'' fig leaf for the US invasion of Grenada.

DM
Dungeon Master. Vide D+D.

DMA
Designated Market Area.

DMA
DiMethylAcetal[s].

DMA
DiMethylAmine.

DMA
Direct Marketing Association.

You know -- spawn of the devil, ruthless sociopaths.

In recent years, when you're home during the day, you seem to get a lot more calls where there's no one on the other end. The explanation is straightforward. In a little warren or a Texas jail, a bank of slaves, felons, or other menial employees call potential marks (sorry -- speak with prospective customers). Phone numbers are dialed for them automatically, many calls at a time. The reason many numbers are dialed at once is this: if each number dialed is allowed to ring five times before being hung up, then every not-at-home wastes half a minute of the slave wages. Simultaneously dialing many numbers saves pennies. It happens constantly that two or more calls will be picked up when there is only one slave available to make a pitch. In that case, one or more of the completed calls will be dropped. That is the source of your mysterious phantom calls. There are also wrong-number calls where the calling party realizes the error before speaking, and is too rude to apologize.

I guess this is occupational rehab. When they get out of jail, the ex-cons are ready to make an honest living.

DMA
Direct Memory Access. Cf. DVMA.

DMA
Dynamic Mechanical Analysis.

DMAH
DiMethylAluminum Hydride. Al(CH3)2H. Has been demonstrated as an aluminum CVD source for hole-filling at 0.25 micron design rules.

DMAP
N-DiMethylAminoPyridine.

DMB
Dave Matthews Band.

DMC
(US) Defense Manpower Commission.

DMC
Dynamic Markov Coding. A class of compression algorithms that generalize arithmetic coding, and achieve the highest compression, but at the cost of long computation and large scratch file requirements. The algorithms start with a zero-order Markov model that corresponds to adaptive determination of symbol frequencies, and systematically builds up a higher-order Markov model of the symbol correlations. Interestingly, Markov introduced what we call a Markov model in order to analyze the poem Eugene Onegin. I think. I'll get back to you on that. For the time being, think of it as an intriguing possibility.

DMCA
(US) Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.

DMCd, dmCd
DiMethyl Cadmium. An organic precursor used in MOCVD growth of II-VI material.

DMD
Digital Micromirror Device[s]. Originally from TI. Larry J. Hornbeck of TI won the 2007/2008 Prize of the AIP for Industrial Applications of Physics ``[f]or his invention and pioneering innovations in both the design and manufacturing of Digital Micromirror Devices (DMDs) integrated into metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS) technology.''

DMD
Duchenne Muscular Dystophy. X-linked, 1/3 of cases are new mutations and 2/3 expression of carrier mother's defective gene. Occurs in one out of every ~3500 boys.

DMDD, DM/DD
Distributed Multiplexing, Distributed Demultiplexing.

DMDBTDMA
N,N'-DiButyl-N,N'-TetraDecyl-MAlonamide. I'd like to buy a vowel, please.

DMDOHEMA
N,N'-DiMethyl-N,N'-DiOctyl-HexylEthoxy-MAlonamide.

DMR
Des Moines Register.

DMRD
Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division based in Newark, Delaware.

DME
Developed Market Economy.

DME
DiMethoxyEthane.

DME
Distance Measuring Equipment. Avionics and traffic control both.

DME
Distributed Management Environment.

DME
Durable Medical Equipment. Term used by Medicare for medical equipment prescribed by a physician for use in the home, seeming to imply that at home, disposable needles are durable, and that an iron lung at the hospital is not. Oh well, language.

Medicare imposes pricing and contract constraints on DME providers, such as requiring (on hospital-type beds) a rent-to-buy option with repair contract.

DMEAA
DiMethylEthylAmineAlane. Has been demonstrated as an aluminum CVD source for hole-filling at 0.25 micron design rules.

DMERC
Durable Medical Equipment Regional Carrier. A local vicar of Medicare for DME.

DMF
Decayed, Missing, and Filled. Sounds like teeth, and it's a water-treatment term, so it might have something to do with fluoridation. I'll probably look into this and report back sometime during this century.

DMF
N,N-DiMethylFormamide.

DMFC
Direct Methanol Fuel Cell. Most names for specific fuel-cell types refer to the electrolyte type. DMFC refers to the fuel. Most fuel cell technologies existing and under development are intended to burn hydrogen. In principle, any oxidation reaction might be harnessed for a fuel cell, but in practice, burning hydrogen with oxygen has been the most practical so far.

DMG
Deutsche Meteorologische Gesellschaft.

dmg
DiMethylGloxime.

DMI
DesMethylImipramine. Also called desipramine. Trade names Norpramin, Pertofrane. A tricyclic antidepressant (TCA). The acronym echoes IMI (imipramine), another TCA.

DMI
Desktop Management Interface. Industry standard for centralized inventory of client hardware and software; uses SNMP.

DMIS
Dimensional Measuring Interface Standard. The common standard for data exchange among CMM (Coordinate Measuring Machines) and CMM software applications like CATIA. Developed by CAM-I.

DMIS 3.0 was accepted by ANSI as ANSI/CAM-I 101-1995. Current work is focused on implementing an object technology, DOT.

DML
Data Manipulation {Language | Logic}.

DMM
Digital Multi-Meter. Approximate trade-off: Fluke -- durable, Tek(tronix) -- inexpensive.

DMMP
Distributed-Memory Multiprocessing System.

DMMMSU
See MMSU.

DMMU
Diesel-Mechanical Multiple-Unit train. A kind of self-powered passenger rail car. Specifically, a DMU in which power from the diesel engine is transmitted mechanically to the (powered) wheels. Just as in a car with ``standard'' transmission (not all that standard in the US any more), except that there's not much point in having a planetary or differential on a rail car.

DMO
Dental health Maintenance Organization. Typically organized more like a PPO than an HMO, in not having a central facility, but more like HMO in not offering any coverage for out-of-network care.

DMOS
Double-diffused MOS. An enhancement-mode nMOS formed by two successive diffusions of opposite dopant sign through the source diffusion window. The first diffusion is of the ``wrong'' sign: a p-diffusion, when for an nMOS the source and drain should be n. This diffusion underlaps the oxide that separates the source and drain diffusion windows, and creates the necessary p-doped region immediately below the gate. The second diffusion, performed with drain diffusion window open as well, is the n doping that defines the usual source and drain. This diffusion also underlaps the gate oxide, shortening the effective gate length (which is the whole point).

A region of the semiconductor under the gate has not been doped. This drift region always works out to be lightly n-doped.

If this isn't enough, you could look up
H. J. Sigg, G. D. Vendelin, T. P. Cauge and J. Kocsis: ``D-MOS Transistor for Microwave Applications,'' IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, vol. ED-19, pp. 45-53 (January 1972).
Y. Tarui, et al.: ``Diffusion Self-Aligned MOST -- A New Approach for High Speed Devices,'' in Proceedings of the First Conf. Solid-State Devices, appearing as a Supplement to the Japanese Journal of [the Society of] Applied Physics, vol. 39, pp. 105-110 (1970).

DMP
DiMethylimide Perylene. A stable dye with OPV promise.

DMP
DiMethylPhenol.

DMPB
Digital MultiPoint Bridging.

DMS
Data Management System.

DMS
Defense Message System.

DMS
Digital Multiplex System. Ooh -- digital! Like what isn't these days?

DMS
Digital Music System.

DMS
Dilute[d] Magnetic Semiconductor--typically a II-VI (e.g., CdMnTe) and occasionally a III-V compound semiconductor (In1-xMnxAs), with small impurity of magnetic ion. Interesting property: band structure changes in presence of magnetic field.

DMS
DiMethylSulfide.

DMS
Direct Menu Select.

DMS
Distributed Memory System.

DMS
Distribution Management System.

DMSB
Disposable Molecular Sieve Beds.

DMSO
DiMethylSulfOxide. Strong polar solvent. Large molecules dissolved in DMSO are more readily absorbed through the skin. ``Nicotine patch'' and similar car-sickness medicine delivery system are based on this; side effect is dry mouth. Read The Strawberry Statement for an interesting application to police-riot control. DMSO itself, rather than as mule for active transport, is a widely used folk treatment for arthritis.

DMSO
Defense Modeling and Simulation Office.

DMSP
Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.

DMT
DiMethylTryptamine.

DMT
Discrete MultiTone (modulation). Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) for wireline, as opposed to wireless communications. A bit more efficient. A few bits, actually.

DMTe, dmTe
DiMethyl Telluride. An organic precursor used in MOCVD growth of II-VI material.

DMTS
Distinguished Member of Technical Staff. An official title at Bell Labs.

DMU
Diesel Multiple-Unit train. Designates a passenger rail car with its own diesel motor, when this is part of a multiple-unit (MU) system. Depending on how the power is transmitted to the wheels, these are classified into DEMU (electric transmission), DHMU (hydraulic), and DMMU (mechanical).

DMV
{ Department | Division } of Motor Vehicles. Also BMV.

DMV
Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung. `German Union of Mathematicians.'

DMZ
DeMilitarized Zone. Part of the history of Vietnam.

DMZ
DiMethyl Zinc. FYI, there's no such thing as ``dimethylzine'' -- it's an ignrant misreading of ``dimethylzinc.'' There is, however, a trimethyl zinc (TMZ).

(Click here for top) Previous section: d.i. (top) to Dizzy (bottom)

Next section: DN (top) to DPW (bottom)

[ Thumb tabs and search tool] [ SBF Homepage ]













































Space above was intentionally left free of glossary definitions so that links to bottom of document can appear at the top of the screen display.

© Alfred M. Kriman 1995-2009 (c)