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18-letter words containing a, f, s

  • bursa of fabricius — a lymphoid gland of the cloaca in birds, believed to function in disease resistance, and closing or disappearing as the bird ages.
  • by fits and starts — spasmodically; without concerted effort
  • california fuchsia — a North American onagraceous plant, Zauschneria californica, with tubular scarlet flowers
  • california rosebay — a Pacific coast shrub or tree (Rhododendron californicum) of the heath family, with rosy or purplish flowers
  • california-fuchsia — a plant belonging to the genus Fuchsia, of the evening primrose family, including many varieties cultivated for their handsome drooping flowers.
  • cartilaginous fish — any fish of the class Chondrichthyes, including the sharks, skates, and rays, having a skeleton composed entirely of cartilage
  • cash-for-questions — of, involved in, or relating to a scandal in which some MPs were accused of accepting bribes to ask particular questions in Parliament
  • catherine of siena — Saint. 1347–80, Italian mystic and ascetic; patron saint of the Dominican order. Feast day: April 29
  • cauliflower cheese — a dish of cauliflower with a cheese sauce, eaten hot
  • cauliflower fungus — a large edible white to yellowish cauliflowerlike mushroom, Sparassis radicata, widely distributed in North America.
  • chamber of horrors — a room, for example in a waxworks, containing objects, images or representations of people or scenes that are believed likely to frighten or horrify visitors
  • charge of quarters — a member of the armed forces who handles administration in his or her unit, esp after duty hours
  • children of israel — the Jews; Hebrews
  • christian reformed — of or relating to a Protestant denomination (Christian Reformed Church) organized in the U.S. in 1857 by groups that had seceded from the Dutch Reformed Church.
  • church of scotland — the established church in Scotland, Calvinist in doctrine and Presbyterian in constitution
  • classified section — the part of a publication that contains classified advertising
  • coffee-table music — unadventurous music
  • combustion furnace — a furnace used in the laboratory to carry out elemental analysis of organic compounds
  • compassion fatigue — the inability to react sympathetically to a crisis, disaster, etc, because of overexposure to previous crises, disasters, etc
  • congress of vienna — the European conference held at Vienna from 1814–15 to settle the territorial problems left by the Napoleonic Wars
  • considered harmful — (programming, humour)   A type of phrase based on the title of Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous note in the March 1968 Communications of the ACM, "Goto Statement Considered Harmful", which fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars. Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently harmful that it will (by policy) no longer print articles taking so assertive a position against a coding practice. In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and parodies bore titles of the form "X considered Y". The structured-programming wars eventually blew over with the realisation that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has remained as a persistent minor in-joke.
  • cooking facilities — equipment necessary for cooking
  • court of st. james — the British royal court
  • creeping featurism — (jargon)   /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ (Or "feature creep") A systematic tendency to load more chrome and features onto systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed when originally designed. "The main problem with BSD Unix has always been creeping featurism." More generally, creeping featurism is the tendency for anything to become more complicated because people keep saying "Gee, it would be even better if it had this feature too". The result is usually a patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra little feature to help someone, and then another, and another, .... When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a cancer. Usually this term is used to describe computer programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the IRS 1040 form, and new cars. A similar phenomenon sometimes afflicts conscious redesigns; see second-system effect. See also creeping elegance.
  • creme de framboise — a liqueur flavored with raspberries.
  • crested flycatcher — any of various tyrant flycatchers (esp. genus Myiarchus) with a prominent crest
  • cultural diffusion — act of diffusing; state of being diffused.
  • curvature of space — (in relativity) a property of space near massive bodies in which their gravitational field causes light to travel along curved paths.
  • dangerous offender — an offender who is deemed by a court of law to be likely to engage in further violent conduct, and who thus becomes eligible for an indefinite prison sentence
  • data flow analysis — (programming)   A process to discover the dependencies between different data items manipulated by a program. The order of execution in a data driven language is determined solely by the data dependencies. For example, given the equations 1. X = A + B 2. B = 2 + 2 3. A = 3 + 4 a data-flow analysis would find that 2 and 3 must be evaluated before 1. Since there are no data dependencies between 2 and 3, they may be evaluated in any order, including in parallel. This technique is implemented in hardware in some pipelined processors with multiple functional units. It allows instructions to be executed as soon as their inputs are available, independent of the original program order.
  • data transfer rate — (communications)   (Or "throughput, data rate", "transmission rate") The amount of data transferred in one direction over a link divided by the time taken to transfer it, usually expressed in bits per second (bps), bytes per second (Bps) or baud. The link may be anything from an interface to a hard disk to a radio transmission from a satellite. Where data transfer is not continuous throughout the given time interval, the data transfer rate is thus an average rate that will be lower than the peak rate. The peak or maximum possible rate may itself be lower than the capacity of the communication channel if the channel is shared, or part of the signal is not considered as data, e.g. checksum or routing information. When applied to data rate, the multiplier prefixes "kilo-", "mega-", "giga-", etc. (and their abbreviations, "k", "M", "G", etc.) always denote powers of 1000. For example, 64 kbps is 64,000 bits per second. This contrasts with units of storage where they stand for powers of 1024, e.g. 1 KB = 1024 bytes. The other important characteristic of a channel is its latency. The bandwidth of a channel determines the data transfer rate but is a different characteristic, measured in Hertz. [Relationship?]
  • dead man's fingers — a soft coral, Alcyonium digitatum, with long finger-like polyps
  • dead-man's fingers — any of various fungi, sponges, plant roots, animal parts, etc., having fingerlike projections and a pale or dull color, as the gray-black woodland fungus Xylaria polymorpha or the whitish spongy gills of a food crab.
  • deep-sea fisherman — a person who takes part in deep-sea fishing
  • defense calculator — IBM 701
  • deficiency disease — any condition, such as pellagra, beriberi, or scurvy, produced by a lack of vitamins or other essential substances
  • depth-first search — (algorithm)   A graph search algorithm which extends the current path as far as possible before backtracking to the last choice point and trying the next alternative path. Depth-first search may fail to find a solution if it enters a cycle in the graph. This can be avoided if we never extend a path to a node which it already contains. Opposite of breadth first search. See also iterative deepening.
  • diaminofluorescein — (organic compound) A fluorescein into which two amino groups have been substituted.
  • disenfranchisement — to disfranchise.
  • disidentifications — Plural form of disidentification.
  • division of labour — a system of organizing the manufacture of an article in a series of separate specialized operations, each of which is carried out by a different worker or group of workers
  • due process of law — the administration of justice in accordance with established rules and principles
  • dwarf storage unit — (humour)   (DSU) An IBM term for a cupboard.
  • dysfunctionalities — Plural form of dysfunctionality.
  • economies of scale — Economies of scale are the financial advantages that a company gains when it produces large quantities of products.
  • eleanor of castile — 1246–90, Spanish wife of Edward I of England. Eleanor Crosses were erected at each place at which her body rested between Nottingham, where she died, and London, where she is buried
  • excess profits tax — a tax on profits exceeding a certain amount
  • fall on one's feet — a plural of foot.
  • fall-back position — an alternative plan
  • fallot's tetralogy — a congenital heart disease in which there are four defects: pulmonary stenosis, enlarged right ventricle, a ventricular septal defect, and an aorta whose origin lies over the septal defect. In babies suffering this disease the defects can be corrected by surgery
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