18-letter words containing c, e, t, o
- energy consumption — amount of energy used
- enforcement action — action by a body or organization, esp a financial one, to make sure that its rules are being followed
- environment agency — an official agency providing information on environmental issues, esp rivers, flooding and pollution
- equinoctial circle — celestial equator
- equinoctial spring — either of the two highest spring tides that occur at the equinoxes
- eraser stains code — (humour, programming) Code that has been refactored many times, leaving swaths of legacy code and design; like paper that has been written on and erased so many times that the pencil marks are no longer the problem - the large greasy stain is.
- erectile impotence — impotence caused by the inability of the penis to become sufficiently firm to penetrate the vagina
- escape sb's notice — If something escapes your notice, you fail to recognize it or realize it.
- essence of violets — an alcoholic solution derived from violets, used as perfume
- ethnomusicological — Relating to or pertaining to ethnomusicology.
- ethnopsychological — Relating to ethnopsychology.
- euclid's algorithm — (algorithm) (Or "Euclidean Algorithm") An algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor (GCD) of two numbers. It relies on the identity gcd(a, b) = gcd(a-b, b) To find the GCD of two numbers by this algorithm, repeatedly replace the larger by subtracting the smaller from it until the two numbers are equal. E.g. 132, 168 -> 132, 36 -> 96, 36 -> 60, 36 -> 24, 36 -> 24, 12 -> 12, 12 so the GCD of 132 and 168 is 12. This algorithm requires only subtraction and comparison operations but can take a number of steps proportional to the difference between the initial numbers (e.g. gcd(1, 1001) will take 1000 steps).
- european community — an economic and political association of European States that came into being in 1967, when the legislative and executive bodies of the European Economic Community merged with those of the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Atomic Energy Community: subsumed into the European Union in 1993
- examination script — a script with answers written on it by an examination candidate taking a written examination
- excess profits tax — a tax on profits exceeding a certain amount
- executable content — (operating system) Executable programs sent by one computer to another via a network. For example a Java applet is executable content. Usage: rare.
- executive decision — a decision made by a person or group that has executive power
- executive director — a member of the board of directors of a company who is also an employee (usually full-time) of that company and who often has a specified area of responsibility, such as finance or production
- executive producer — a producer of a film or television programme who is involved with business or technical issues rather than the technical aspects of film or television production
- extermination camp — a camp where people are imprisoned and killed
- eyewitness account — a description given by someone who was present at an event
- fabric conditioner — a product used when washing clothes to make them feel softer
- farm the long acre — to graze cows on the verge of a road
- fettuccine alfredo — fettuccine in cream sauce with grated Parmesan cheese.
- fifth monarchy men — (during the Commonwealth in the 17th century) a militant sect of Puritans who identified the fifth monarchy with the millennial reign of Christ and who believed they should help to inaugurate that reign by force.
- file control block — (operating system) (FCB) An MS-DOS data structure that stores information about an open file. The number of FCBs is configured in CONFIG.SYS with a command FCBS=x,y where x (between 1 and 255 inclusive, default 4) specifies the number of file control blocks to allocate and therefore the number of files that MS-DOS can have open at one time. y (not needed from DOS 5.0 onward) specifies the number of files to be closed automatically if all x are in use.
- first class module — (programming) A module that is a first class data object of the programming language, e.g. a record containing functions. In a functional language, it is standard to have first class programs, so program building blocks can have the same status.
- fitness instructor — physical trainer, exercise teacher
- flat on one's back — lying supine
- fluorescent screen — a transparent screen coated on one side with a phosphor that fluoresces when exposed to X-rays or cathode rays
- fly in the face of — to move through the air using wings.
- forced development — the processing of underexposed photographic film to increase the image density
- forced perspective — the use of objects or images that are larger or smaller than they should be, to suggest that they are nearer or further away than they really are
- forensic chemistry — the application of facts concerning chemistry to questions of civil and criminal law.
- forensic scientist — science expert: provides evidence
- forward compatible — forward compatibility
- fourth commandment — “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy”: fourth of the Ten Commandments.
- fracture toughness — The fracture toughness of a material is how likely it is to resist fracture.
- frequency function — probability density function (def 2).
- ftp software, inc. — (company) Developers of the original PC/TCP Packet Driver specification. Address: 26 Princess St. Wakefield, MA 01880-3004. Telephone: +1 (617) 246 0900.
- functional disease — a disease in which there is an abnormal change in the function of an organ, but no structural alteration in the tissues involved (opposed to organic disease).
- functional testing — (testing) (Or "black-box testing", "closed-box testing") The application of test data derived from functional requirements without regard to how the system is implemented.
- galactic longitude — the angular distance in degrees measured eastward in the galactic plane from a radius drawn from the earth as center to the constellation Sagittarius.
- galilean telescope — a refracting telescope that forms an erect image, consisting of an objective of relatively long focal length that causes light rays to converge and an eyepiece of short focal length that causes them to diverge.
- garbage collection — (programming) (GC) The process by which dynamically allocated storage is reclaimed during the execution of a program. The term usually refers to automatic periodic storage reclamation by the garbage collector (part of the run-time system), as opposed to explicit code to free specific blocks of memory. Automatic garbage collection is usually triggered during memory allocation when the amount free memory falls below some threshold or after a certain number of allocations. Normal execution is suspended and the garbage collector is run. There are many variations on this basic scheme. Languages like Lisp represent expressions as graphs built from cells which contain pointers and data. These languages use automatic dynamic storage allocation to build expressions. During the evaluation of an expression it is necessary to reclaim space which is used by subexpressions but which is no longer pointed to by anything. This reclaimed memory is returned to the free memory pool for subsequent reallocation. Without garbage collection the program's memory requirements would increase monotonically throughout execution, possibly exceeding system limits on virtual memory size. The three main methods are mark-sweep garbage collection, reference counting and copying garbage collection. See also the AI koan about garbage collection.
- gas-cooled reactor — a nuclear reactor using a gas as the coolant. In the Mark I type the coolant is carbon dioxide, the moderator is graphite, and the fuel is uranium cased in magnox
- gene amplification — an increase in the frequency of replication of a DNA segment.
- general contractor — a person who contracts to construct a building or buildings, for a stipulated sum, in accordance with certain plans and specifications, or to remodel or build an addition to a building
- genetic algorithms — genetic algorithm
- genetic counseling — the counseling of individuals with established or potential genetic problems, concerned with inheritance patterns and risks to future offspring.