15-letter words containing c, s, f
- enfranchisement — The act of enfranchising.
- existence proof — non-constructive proof
- extensification — The process of making something (more) extensive.
- fabric softener — a substance added to fabrics during laundering to make them puffier and softer.
- facile princeps — an obvious leader
- factor analysis — the use of one of several methods for reducing a set of variables to a lesser number of new variables, each of which is a function of one or more of the original variables.
- faculty advisor — a member of the faculty who gives advice to students
- fahnestock clip — a type of terminal using a spring that clamps readily onto a connecting wire.
- false buckthorn — a spiny shrub or small tree, Bumelia lanuginosa, of the sapodilla family, native to the southern U.S., having gummy, milky sap and white, bell-shaped flowers and yielding a hard, light-brown wood.
- false decretals — the Pseudo-Isidorian documents.
- false pregnancy — physiological signs of pregnancy without conception; pseudocyesis.
- false pretences — fraud, deception
- fantasmagorical — Alternative form of phantasmagorical.
- fantasticalness — The state or condition of being fantastical.
- fasciolopsiasis — a parasitic disease caused by flukes of the genus Fasciolopsis and characterized by abdominal pain and diarrhea: common in the Far East.
- fast-food chain — a chain of restaurants serving fast food
- featherstitched — Simple past tense and past participle of featherstitch.
- fee-for-service — pertaining to the charging of fees for specific services rendered in health care, as distinguished from participating in a prepaid medical practice: fee-for-service medicine.
- fencepost error — 1. (Rarely "lamp-post error") A problem with the discrete equivalent of a boundary condition, often exhibited in programs by iterative loops. From the following problem: "If you build a fence 100 feet long with posts 10 feet apart, how many posts do you need?" (Either 9 or 11 is a better answer than the obvious 10). For example, suppose you have a long list or array of items, and want to process items m through n; how many items are there? The obvious answer is n - m, but that is off by one; the right answer is n - m + 1. The "obvious" formula exhibits a fencepost error. See also zeroth and note that not all off-by-one errors are fencepost errors. The game of Musical Chairs involves a catastrophic off-by-one error where N people try to sit in N - 1 chairs, but it's not a fencepost error. Fencepost errors come from counting things rather than the spaces between them, or vice versa, or by neglecting to consider whether one should count one or both ends of a row. 2. (Rare) An error induced by unexpected regularities in input values, which can (for instance) completely thwart a theoretically efficient binary tree or hash coding implementation. The error here involves the difference between expected and worst case behaviours of an algorithm.
- ferroelasticity — (physics) A phenomenon, analogous to ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity, in which spontaneous strain arises within a material.
- fetishistically — in a fetishistic manner
- fibrocartilages — Plural form of fibrocartilage.
- fideicommissary — the recipient of a fideicommissum.
- fiduciary issue — an issue of banknotes not backed by gold
- fifth columnist — A fifth columnist is someone who secretly supports and helps the enemies of the country or organization they are in.
- file descriptor — (programming, operating system) An integer that identifies an open file within a process. This number is obtained as a result of opening a file. Operations which read, write, or close a file would take the file descriptor as an input parameter. In many operating system implementations, file descriptors are small integers which index a table of open files. In Unix, file descriptors 0, 1 and 2 correspond to the standard input, standard output and standard error files respectively. See file descriptor leak.
- finishing touch — a final additional or detail that completes and perfects something
- fire resistance — the amount of resistance of a material or construction to fire.
- fireless cooker — an insulated container that seals in heat to cook food.
- first principle — any axiom, law, or abstraction assumed and regarded as representing the highest possible degree of generalization.
- first secretary — The First Secretary of the Welsh Assembly is the leader of the ruling party.
- first-day cover — a cover marked so as to indicate that it was mailed on the first day of issue of the stamp it bears and from one of the cities at which the stamp was issued on that day.
- fischer-dieskau — Dietrich [dee-trik;; German dee-trikh] /ˈdi trɪk;; German ˈdi trɪx/ (Show IPA), 1925–2012, German baritone.
- fishhook cactus — a large cactus, Ferocactus wislizenii, of the southwestern U.S. and Mexico, having hooked spines and red or yellow flowers.
- fission product — a nuclide produced either directly by nuclear fission or by the radioactive decay of such a nuclide
- fission reactor — a nuclear reactor in which a fission reaction takes place
- fitness fanatic — someone who is obsessed with exercise and keeping himself or herself fit
- fitness tracker — a wearable electronic device or a software application that monitors one's physical fitness and daily physical activity.
- flatbed scanner — a type of optical scanner having a flat, stationary surface on which a page is scanned by a moving head.
- flavourdynamics — as in quantum flavour dynamics, a mathematical model used to describe the interaction of flavoured particles (weak force) through the exchange of intermediate vector bosons
- fleet insurance — Fleet insurance is a type of insurance contract that applies to a number of vehicles.
- floating screed — Building Trades. screed (def 3).
- flood insurance — insurance covering loss or damage to property arising from a flood, flood tide, or the like.
- floor exercises — exercises designed to improve fitness, carried out on the floor
- flowers of zinc — a white or yellowish-white, amorphous, odorless, water-insoluble powder, ZnO, used chiefly as a paint pigment, in cosmetics, dental cements, matches, white printing inks, and opaque glass, and in medicine in the treatment of skin conditions.
- fluid mechanics — an applied science dealing with the basic principles of gaseous and liquid matter.
- fluorochemicals — Plural form of fluorochemical.
- fly honeysuckle — either of two honeysuckle shrubs, Lonicera canadensis, of eastern North America, or L. xylosteum, of Eurasia, having paired yellowish flowers tinged with red.
- focusing screen — a camera in which the image appears on a ground-glass viewer (focusing screen) after being reflected by a mirror or after passing through a prism or semitransparent glass; in one type (single-lens reflex camera) light passes through the same lens to both the ground glass and the film, while in another type (twin-lens reflex camera) light passes through one lens (viewing lens) to the ground glass and through a second lens (taking lens) to the film, the lenses being mechanically coupled for focusing.
- food insecurity — an economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food.