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20-letter words containing c, o, a, e

  • file descriptor leak — (programming)   (Or "fd leak" /F D leek/) A kind of programming bug analogous to a core leak, in which a program fails to close file descriptors ("fd"s) after file operations are completed, and thus eventually runs out of them. See leak.
  • financial aid office — an office at a US university that assesses students' financial needs and, if appropriate, offers them financial aid
  • financial controller — a senior executive in usually commercial organization who is in charge of financial affairs and oversees such things as the preparation of budgets and accounts
  • first earl of cromer — 1st Earl of, Evelyn Baring.
  • fixed action pattern — a highly stereotyped pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a particular species.
  • fixed-price contract — a contract in which the price is preset and invariable, regardless of the actual costs of production.
  • flame-fusion process — Verneuil process.
  • flat-plate collector — a type of solar collector consisting of a series of flat glass or plastic plates with black metal surfaces that absorb solar energy.
  • flight data recorder — a recording device that records relevant data during an aircraft's flight
  • florence nightingale — Florence ("the Lady with the Lamp") 1820–1910, English nurse: reformer of hospital conditions and procedures; reorganizer of nurse's training programs.
  • fontainebleau school — a group of artists, many of them Italian and Flemish, who worked on the decorations of the palace of Fontainebleau in the 16th century.
  • for sb's delectation — If you do something for someone's delectation, you do it to give them enjoyment or pleasure.
  • force someone's hand — to force someone to act
  • force-field analysis — a decision-making technique, often presented graphically, that identifies all the positive and negative forces impinging on a problem
  • frederick barbarossa — ("Frederick Barbarossa") 1123?–90, king of Germany 1152–90; king of Italy 1152–90: emperor of the Holy Roman Empire 1152–90.
  • frequency modulation — FM.
  • front-to-back engine — an engine in which the crankshaft is arranged front to back along the axis of the vehicle
  • frontenac et palluau — Comte de (Louis de Buade) 1620?–98, French governor of New France 1672–82, 1689–98.
  • frosting on the cake — a sweet mixture, cooked or uncooked, for coating or filling cakes, cookies, and the like; icing.
  • fulminate of mercury — a gray, crystalline solid, Hg(CNO) 2 , used chiefly in the manufacture of commercial and military detonators.
  • fundamental constant — a physical constant, such as the gravitational constant or speed of light, that plays a fundamental role in physics and chemistry and usually has an accurately known value
  • garcilaso de la vega — 1503?–36, Spanish poet.
  • general practitioner — a medical practitioner whose practice is not limited to any specific branch of medicine or class of diseases. Abbreviation: G.P.
  • genetically modified — biologically altered
  • geological timescale — any division of geological time into chronological units, whether relative (with units in the correct temporal sequence) or absolute (with numerical ages attached)
  • get a real computer! — (jargon)   A typical hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work done on a toy system or bitty box. The threshold for "real computer" rises with time. As of mid-1993 it meant multi-tasking, with a hard disk, and an address space bigger than 16 megabytes. At this time, according to GLS, computers with character-only displays were verging on "unreal". In 2001, a real computer has a one gigahertz processor, 128 MB of RAM, 20 GB of hard disk, and runs Linux.
  • get one's hackles up — to become tense with anger; bristle
  • glucosamine sulphate — a compound used in some herbal remedies and dietary supplements, esp to strengthen joint cartilage
  • glyceryl monoacetate — acetin.
  • go like the clappers — to move extremely fast
  • gorno-altai republic — a constituent republic of S Russia: mountainous, rising over 4350 m (14 500 ft) in the Altai Mountains of the south. Capital: Gorno-Altaisk. Pop: 202 900 (2002). Area: 92 600 sq km (35 740 sq miles)
  • grade school teacher — a teacher in a grade school
  • graphics accelerator — (graphics, hardware)   Hardware (often an extra circuit board) to perform tasks such as plotting lines and surfaces in two or three dimensions, filling, shading and hidden line removal.
  • greenwich hour angle — hour angle measured from the meridian of Greenwich, England.
  • grey-crowned babbler — an insect-eating Australian bird, Pomatostomus temporalis of the family Timaliidae
  • group life insurance — a form of life insurance available to members of a group, typically employees of a company, under a master policy.
  • guarded horn clauses — (language)   (GHC) A parallel dialect of Prolog by K. Ueda in which each clause has a guard. GHC is similar to Parlog. When several clauses match a goal, their guards are evaluated in parallel and the first clause whose guard is found to be true is used and others are rejected. It uses committed-choice nondeterminism. See also FGHC, KL1.
  • hampton court palace — a royal palace in Hampton, London, built in 1515 by Cardinal Wolsey
  • harmonic minor scale — minor scale (def 1).
  • harmonic progression — a series of numbers the reciprocals of which are in arithmetic progression.
  • have come a long way — If you say that someone or something has come a long way, you mean that they have developed, progressed, or become very successful.
  • have had one's chips — to be defeated, condemned to die, killed, etc
  • heat of condensation — the heat liberated by a unit mass of gas at its boiling point as it condenses to a liquid: equal to the heat of vaporization.
  • helicopter parenting — a style of child rearing in which an overprotective mother or father discourages a child's independence by being too involved in the child's life: In typical helicopter parenting, a mother or father swoops in at any sign of challenge or discomfort.
  • heteropolysaccharide — (carbohydrate) any polysaccharide formed from two or more different kinds of monosaccharide.
  • hexadecimal notation — a number system having a base 16; the symbols for the numbers 0–9 are the same as those used in the decimal system, and the numbers 10–15 are usually represented by the letters A–F. The system is used as a convenient way of representing the internal binary code of a computer
  • hierarchical routing — The complex problem of routing on large networks can be simplified by breaking a network into a hierarchy of smaller networks, where each level is responsible for its own routing. The Internet has, basically, three levels: the backbones, the mid-levels, and the stub networks. The backbones know how to route between the mid-levels, the mid-levels know how to route between the sites, and each site (being an autonomous system) knows how to route internally. See also Exterior Gateway Protocol, Interior Gateway Protocol, transit network.
  • hit the panic button — an alarm button for use in an emergency, as to summon help.
  • honeysuckle ornament — anthemion.
  • horizontal microcode — (processor)   Microcode using horizontal encoding.
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