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13-letter words containing d, e, f, i, c

  • disinfectants — Plural form of disinfectant.
  • disrespectful — characterized by, having, or showing disrespect; lacking courtesy or esteem: a disrespectful remark about teachers.
  • divine office — office (def 12c).
  • domestic fowl — a chicken.
  • domino effect — the cumulative effect that results when one event precipitates a series of like events.
  • driving force — impetus
  • duff's device — The most dramatic use yet seen of fall through in C, invented by Tom Duff when he was at Lucasfilm. Trying to bum all the instructions he could out of an inner loop that copied data serially onto an output port, he decided to unroll it. He then realised that the unrolled version could be implemented by *interlacing* the structures of a switch and a loop: register n = (count + 7) / 8; /* count > 0 assumed */ switch (count % 8) { case 0: do { *to = *from++; case 7: *to = *from++; case 6: *to = *from++; case 5: *to = *from++; case 4: *to = *from++; case 3: *to = *from++; case 2: *to = *from++; case 1: *to = *from++; } while (--n > 0); } Shocking though it appears to all who encounter it for the first time, the device is actually perfectly valid, legal C. C's default fall through in case statements has long been its most controversial single feature; Duff observed that "This code forms some sort of argument in that debate, but I'm not sure whether it's for or against."
  • edison effect — the phenomenon of the flow of electric current when an electrode sealed inside the bulb of an incandescent lamp is connected to the positive terminal of the lamp.
  • face validity — the extent to which a psychological test appears to measure what it is intended to measure
  • factionalized — Simple past tense and past participle of factionalize.
  • family credit — (formerly, in Britain) a means-tested allowance paid to low-earning families with one or more dependent children and one or both parents in work: replaced by Working Families' Tax Credit in 1999
  • fence-mending — the practice of reestablishing or strengthening personal, business, or political contacts and relationships by conciliation or negotiation, as after a dispute, disagreement, or period of inactivity.
  • fickle-minded — (of a person) prone to casual change; inconstant.
  • fictionalised — Simple past tense and past participle of fictionalise.
  • fictionalized — to make into fiction; give a somewhat imaginative or fictional version of: to fictionalize a biography.
  • fiddlesticks! — an expression of annoyance or disagreement
  • fidus achates — a faithful friend or companion
  • field captain — a member of a team taking active part in a game who is authorized to make decisions for the team, especially in regard to planning plays, deciding whether to accept penalties called by an official against the opponents, etc.
  • field cricket — any of several jumping, orthopterous insects of the family Gryllidae, characterized by long antennae and stridulating organs on the forewings of the male, as one of the species commonly found in pastures and meadows (field cricket) or on trees and shrubs (tree cricket)
  • field kitchen — the place at which the food for a unit of soldiers in the field is prepared
  • field officer — an officer holding a field grade.
  • field service — military service performed in the field
  • film recorder — a photographic device for producing a sound strip on a motion-picture film.
  • fin de siecle — the end of the 19th century.
  • finisher card — (in manufacturing fibers) the last card in the carding process, for converting stock into roving.
  • fireside chat — an informal address by a political leader over radio or television, especially as given by President Franklin D. Roosevelt beginning in 1933.
  • firewall code — 1. The code you put in a system (say, a telephone switch) to make sure that the users can't do any damage. Since users always want to be able to do everything but never want to suffer for any mistakes, the construction of a firewall is a question not only of defensive coding but also of interface presentation, so that users don't even get curious about those corners of a system where they can burn themselves. 2. Any sanity check inserted to catch a can't happen error. Wise programmers often change code to fix a bug twice: once to fix the bug, and once to insert a firewall which would have arrested the bug before it did quite as much damage.
  • fitted carpet — wall-to-wall carpeting
  • fixed capital — capital goods, as machinery and tools, that are relatively durable and can be used repeatedly in the production of goods.
  • fluid-extract — a liquid preparation, containing alcohol as a solvent or as a preservative, that contains in each cubic centimeter the medicinal activity of one gram of the crude drug in powdered form.
  • folk medicine — health practices arising from superstition, cultural traditions, or empirical use of native remedies, especially food substances.
  • food security — an economic and social condition of ready access by all members of a household to nutritionally adequate and safe food: a household with high food security.
  • frederick iii — 1415–93, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire 1452–93; as Frederick IV, king of Germany 1440–93.
  • french endive — endive (def 2).
  • french window — a pair of casement windows extending to the floor and serving as portals, especially from a room to an outside porch or terrace.
  • friction feed — (printer)   A method some printers and plotters use to move paper by rotating one or both of a pair of spring-loaded rubber-coated rollers with the paper sandwiched between them. Friction feed printers are notorious for slipping when the rollers wear out, but can take standard typing paper. For printers with a sheet feeder, friction feed is more appropriate than sprocket feed which requires the holes in the paper to engage with the sprockets of the feed mechanism.
  • friction head — (in a hydraulic system) the part of a head of water or of another liquid that represents the energy that the system dissipates through friction with the sides of conduits or channels and through heating from turbulent flow.
  • fuel-injected — (of an engine) having fuel injection.
  • genetic drift — random changes in the frequency of alleles in a gene pool, usually of small populations.
  • handkerchiefs — Plural form of handkerchief.
  • ides of march — 15th March: ominous date
  • ile de france — a former province in N France, including Paris and the region around it.
  • Île-de-france — a region of N France, in the Paris Basin: part of the duchy of France in the 10th century
  • in advance of — prior to
  • in confidence — full trust; belief in the powers, trustworthiness, or reliability of a person or thing: We have every confidence in their ability to succeed.
  • in-difference — lack of interest or concern: We were shocked by their indifference toward poverty.
  • indifferences — lack of interest or concern: We were shocked by their indifference toward poverty.
  • landing force — the ground forces of an amphibious task force that effect the assault landing in an amphibious operation.
  • lines of code — (programming, unit)   (LOC) A common measure of the size or progress of a programming project. For example, one can describe a completed project as consisting of 100,000 LOC; or one can characterise a week's progress as 5000 LOC. Using LOC as a metric of progress encourages programmers to reinvent the wheel or split their code into lots of short lines.
  • malfunctioned — Simple past tense and past participle of malfunction.
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