19-letter words containing a, l, n, c
- first-sale doctrine — a legal principle allowing the purchaser of a lawfully made copy of a copyright-protected work to sell or give away that copy without permission but not to reproduce it.
- flag of convenience — the foreign flag under which merchant ships register in order to save on taxes or wages, or to avoid government regulations.
- flannelmouth sucker — a sucker, Catostomus latipinnis, of the Colorado River and its tributaries.
- focal plane shutter — an opaque shield in a camera, lying in the focal plane of the lens, that, when tripped, admits light to expose the film or plate for a predetermined period, usually a fraction of a second
- focal-plane shutter — a camera shutter situated directly in front of the film.
- fractal compression — (algorithm) A technique for encoding images using fractals.
- fractional currency — coins or paper money of a smaller denomination than the basic monetary unit.
- fraternal insurance — insurance underwritten by a fraternal society, under either a legal reserve plan or an assessment plan.
- frill-necked lizard — a large arboreal insectivorous Australian lizard, Chlamydosaurus kingi, having an erectile fold of skin around the neck: family Agamidae (agamas)
- functional analysis — the branch of mathematics that deals with the theory of vector spaces and linear functionals.
- functional calculus — the branch of symbolic logic that includes the sentential calculus and that deals with sentential functions and quantifiers and with logical relations between sentences containing quantifiers.
- functional currency — Functional currency is the main currency used by a business.
- functional database — (database, language) A database which uses a functional language as its query language. Databases would seem to be an inappropriate application for functional languages since, a purely functional language would have to return a new copy of the entire database every time (part of) it was updated. To be practically scalable, the update mechanism must clearly be destructive rather than functional; however it is quite feasible for the query language to be purely functional so long as the database is considered as an argument. One approach to the update problem would use a monad to encapsulate database access and ensure it was single threaded. Alternative approaches have been suggested by Trinder, who suggests non-destructive updating with shared data structures, and Sutton who uses a variant of a Phil Wadler's linear type system. There are two main classes of functional database languages. The first is based upon Backus' FP language, of which FQL is probably the best known example. Adaplan is a more recent language which falls into this category. More recently, people have been working on languages which are syntactically very similar to modern functional programming languages, but which also provide all of the features of a database language, e.g. bulk data structures which can be incrementally updated, type systems which can be incrementally updated, and all data persisting in a database. Examples are PFL [Poulovassilis&Small, VLDB-91], and Machiavelli [Ohori et al, ACM SIGMOD Conference, 1998].
- functional language — (language) A language that supports and encourages functional programming.
- functional medicine — individualized medical care that recognizes the interactions between genetic and environmental factors and between the body's interconnected systems.
- galactic coordinate — Usually, galactic coordinates. a member of a system of coordinates that define the position of a celestial body with reference to the Milky Way.
- gas central heating — a system of central heating fuelled by combustible gas
- gastrocolic omentum — the peritoneal fold attached to the stomach and the colon and hanging over the small intestine.
- gastroenterocolitis — (medicine) inflammation of the stomach, small intestines, and colon.
- gastroenterological — Of or pertaining to gastroenterology.
- general anaesthetic — sth administered to induce unconsciousness
- general linguistics — the study of the characteristics of language in general rather than of a particular language; theoretical, rather than applied, linguistics.
- general post office — (in the U.S. postal system) the main post office of a city, county, etc., that also has branch post offices. Abbreviation: G.P.O., GPO.
- generic array logic — (hardware, integrated circuit) (GAL) A newer kind of Programmable Array Logic based on EEPROM storage cells, been pioneered by Lattice. GALs can be erased and reprogrammed and usually replace a whole set of different PALs (hence the name).
- geneva nomenclature — an internationally accepted system for naming organic carbon compounds.
- geocentric parallax — the apparent displacement of an observed object due to a change in the position of the observer.
- gestational carrier — surrogate mother (def 3).
- giraldus cambrensis — literary name of Gerald de Barri. ?1146–?1223, Welsh chronicler and churchman, noted for his accounts of his travels in Ireland and Wales
- glottochronological — Of or pertaining to glottochronology.
- glyceryl trinitrate — nitroglycerin.
- goldbach conjecture — an unproved theorem that every even integer greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two prime numbers.
- grammatical meaning — the meaning of an inflectional morpheme or of some other syntactic device, as word order.
- grand duke nicholas — of Cusa [kyoo-zuh] /ˈkyu zə/ (Show IPA), 1401–1464, German cardinal, mathematician, and philosopher. German Nikolaus von Cusa.
- grandfather's clock — a pendulum floor clock having a case as tall as or taller than a person; tall-case clock; long-case clock.
- grandmother's clock — a pendulum clock similar to a grandfather's clock but shorter.
- great wall of china — a system of fortified walls with a roadway along the top, constructed as a defense for China against the nomads of the regions that are now Mongolia and Manchuria: completed in the 3rd century b.c., but later repeatedly modified and rebuilt. 2000 miles (3220 km) long.
- great-grandchildren — a grandchild of one's son or daughter.
- gregorian telescope — a telescope similar in design to the Cassegrainian telescope but less widely used.
- guerrilla financing — the use of unconventional and marginally legal means to capitalize enterprises
- gulf of carpentaria — a shallow inlet of the Arafura Sea, in N Australia between Arnhem Land and Cape York Peninsula
- gulf of tehuantepec — an inlet of the Pacific on the south coast of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in S Mexico
- halt and catch fire — (humour, processor) (HCF) Any of several undocumented and semi-mythical machine instructions with destructive side-effects, supposedly included for test purposes on several well-known architectures going as far back as the IBM 360. The Motorola 6800 microprocessor was the first for which an HCF opcode became widely known. This instruction caused the processor to read every memory location sequentially until reset.
- handlebar moustache — a man's moustache having long, curved ends that resemble the handlebars of a bicycle.
- hang in the balance — to fasten or attach (a thing) so that it is supported only from above or at a point near its own top; suspend.
- heel-and-toe racing — race walking.
- heinrich schliemann — Heinrich [hahyn-rikh] /ˈhaɪn rɪx/ (Show IPA), 1822–90, German archaeologist: excavated ancient cities of Troy and Mycenae.
- hepatic portal vein — a vein connecting two capillary networks in the liver
- heptachlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) Either of twenty-four isomers of the polychlorinated biphenyl containing seven chlorine atoms.
- highland clearances — in Scotland, the removal, often by force, of the people from some parts of the Highlands to make way for sheep, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
- holy innocents' day — December 28, a day of religious observance commemorating the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem by Herod's order.