19-letter words containing c, i, e, n, f
- jockey for position — If someone is jockeying for position, they are using whatever methods they can in order to get into a better position than their rivals.
- juan de fuca strait — strait between Vancouver Island and NW Wash.: c. 100 mi (161 km) long
- judicial conference — a conference of judges held to discuss improvements in methods or judicial procedure through court rules or otherwise.
- languages of choice — C and Lisp. Nearly every hacker knows one of these, and most good ones are fluent in both. Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential communities. There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers with Fortran, or even assembler, as their language of choice. They often prefer to be known as Real Programmers, and other hackers consider them a bit odd (see "The Story of Mel"). Assembler is generally no longer considered interesting or appropriate for anything but HLL implementation, glue, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems programs. Fortran occupies a shrinking niche in scientific programming. Most hackers tend to frown on languages like Pascal and Ada, which don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for hacking (see bondage-and-discipline language), and to regard everything even remotely connected with COBOL or other traditional card walloper languages as a total and unmitigated loss.
- leading aircraftman — the rank above aircraftman
- leading coefficient — the coefficient of the term of highest degree in a given polynomial. 5 is the leading coefficient in 5 x 3 + 3 x 2 − 2 x + 1.
- library of congress — one of the major library collections in the world, located in Washington, D.C., and functioning in some ways as the national library of the U.S. although not officially designated as such: established by Congress in 1800 for service to its members, but now also serving government agencies, other libraries, and the public.
- lift the curtain on — to begin
- lift up one's voice — to speak out loudly
- line of demarcation — a separation between things deemed to be distinct
- loss-of-containment — Loss-of-containment happens when a fluid which is usually contained somewhere escapes from that place.
- low insertion force — (hardware) (LIF) PGA/SPGA sockets with no handle. The integrated circuit is simply pushed into the socket, and levered out to remove. Most motherboard processor sockets are now ZIF rather than LIF.
- luminous efficiency — the perceived brightness of light as a ratio of the total luminous flux to total radiant flux of the source; a measure of brightness obtained by dividing the source's luminous flux by the consumption of its energy.
- lyon office of arms — Heralds' Office.
- magnetomotive force — a scalar quantity that is a measure of the sources of magnetic flux in a magnetic circuit. Abbreviation: mmf.
- manned space flight — space travel in vehicles with a human crew
- means of production — resources: equipment, workers
- membership function — fuzzy subset
- ministry of defence — the government department responsible for the country's military measures or resources
- moving spirit/force — The moving spirit or moving force behind something is the person or thing that caused it to start and to keep going, or that influenced people to take part in it.
- nasty piece of work — malicious person
- neats vs. scruffies — (artificial intelligence, jargon) The label used to refer to one of the continuing holy wars in artificial intelligence research. This conflict tangles together two separate issues. One is the relationship between human reasoning and AI; "neats" tend to try to build systems that "reason" in some way identifiably similar to the way humans report themselves as doing, while "scruffies" profess not to care whether an algorithm resembles human reasoning in the least as long as it works. More importantly, neats tend to believe that logic is king, while scruffies favour looser, more ad-hoc methods driven by empirical knowledge. To a neat, scruffy methods appear promiscuous, successful only by accident and not productive of insights about how intelligence actually works; to a scruffy, neat methods appear to be hung up on formalism and irrelevant to the hard-to-capture "common sense" of living intelligences.
- non-confidentiality — spoken, written, acted on, etc., in strict privacy or secrecy; secret: a confidential remark.
- north pacific ocean — the northern part of the Pacific Ocean, extending from the equator to the Arctic Ocean.
- not care/give a fig — If you say that someone doesn't care a fig or doesn't give a fig about something, you are emphasizing that they think it is unimportant or that they are not interested in it.
- on cue/as if on cue — If you say that something happened on cue or as if on cue, you mean that it happened just when it was expected to happen, or just at the right time.
- pancreatic fibrosis — cystic fibrosis.
- perfect competition — when neither producer nor consumer controls price
- performance anxiety — the stage fright that a person feels when they are about to perform (a play, piece of music etc) in front of an audience
- performance figures — the statistics that indicate how well or badly a company or organization has performed
- phacoemulsification — the removal of a cataract by first liquefying the affected lens with ultrasonic vibrations and then extracting it by suction.
- phakoemulsification — the removal of a cataract by first liquefying the affected lens with ultrasonic vibrations and then extracting it by suction.
- piece of the action — the process or state of acting or of being active: The machine is not in action now.
- pirates of penzance — an operetta (1879) by Sir William S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan.
- plastic deformation — In plastic deformation a material changes shape when a stress is applied to it and does not go back to its original state when the stress is removed.
- pocket-handkerchief — handkerchief (def 1).
- point of inflection — inflection point.
- post-and-rail fence — a fence constructed of upright wooden posts with horizontal timber slotted through it
- presumption of fact — a presumption based on experience or knowledge of the relationship between a known fact and a fact inferred from it.
- pride-of-california — a shrubby plant, Lathyrus splendens, of the legume family, native to southern California, having showy clusters of pale rose-pink, violet, or magenta flowers and large, smooth, beaked pods.
- professional advice — advice given by someone trained in a particular and relevant profession or job
- professional school — a postgraduate school or college which trains students for a particular profession
- reinforced concrete — concrete containing steel bars, strands, mesh, etc., to absorb tensile and shearing stresses.
- republic of ireland — John, 1838–1918, U.S. Roman Catholic clergyman and social reformer, born in Ireland: archbishop of St. Paul, Minn., 1888–1918.
- republic of vietnam — the name (from 1955–75) for South Vietnam, as an independent republic, following the division of the country in 1954 into North Vietnam and South Vietnam
- reticular formation — a network of neurons in the brainstem involved in consciousness, regulation of breathing, the transmission of sensory stimuli to higher brain centers, and the constantly shifting muscular activity that supports the body against gravity.
- ruffini's corpuscle — an end organ of certain sensory neurons that branches out parallel to the skin and responds to steady pressure.
- saccharofarinaceous — pertaining to or consisting of sugar and meal.
- san francisco peaks — a mountain mass in N Arizona: highest point in the state, Humphrey's Peak, 12,611 feet (3845 meters).
- savings certificate — a certificate of deposit for a specific sum of money in a savings account, especially a deposit for a fixed term at a specified interest rate.