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19-letter words containing f, a, n, c, l

  • false consciousness — a Marxist theory that people are unable to see things, especially exploitation, oppression, and social relations, as they really are; the hypothesized inability of the human mind to develop a sophisticated awareness of how it is developed and shaped by circumstances.
  • family practitioner — medical specialization in general practice, requiring training beyond that of general practice and leading to board certification.
  • fellow countrywoman — a fellow countrywoman is a female citizen of the same state as the person speaking, writing, or being referred to
  • female circumcision — clitoridectomy.
  • financial ombudsman — any of five British ombudsmen: the Banking Ombudsman, set up in 1986 to investigate complaints from bank customers; the Building Society Ombudsman, set up in 1987 to investigate complaints from building society customers; the Insurance Ombudsman, set up in 1981 to investigate complaints by policyholders (since 1988 this ombudsman has also operated a Unit Trust Ombudsman scheme); the Investment Ombudsman set up in 1989 to investigate complaints by investors (the Personal Investment Authority Ombudsman is responsible for investigating complaints by personal investors); and the Pensions Ombudsman, set up in 1993 to investigate complaints regarding pension schemes
  • financial statement — a document that records the financial activities and state of an organization or person
  • first-sale doctrine — a legal principle allowing the purchaser of a lawfully made copy of a copyright-protected work to sell or give away that copy without permission but not to reproduce it.
  • flag of convenience — the foreign flag under which merchant ships register in order to save on taxes or wages, or to avoid government regulations.
  • flannelmouth sucker — a sucker, Catostomus latipinnis, of the Colorado River and its tributaries.
  • focal plane shutter — an opaque shield in a camera, lying in the focal plane of the lens, that, when tripped, admits light to expose the film or plate for a predetermined period, usually a fraction of a second
  • focal-plane shutter — a camera shutter situated directly in front of the film.
  • fractal compression — (algorithm)   A technique for encoding images using fractals.
  • fractional currency — coins or paper money of a smaller denomination than the basic monetary unit.
  • fraternal insurance — insurance underwritten by a fraternal society, under either a legal reserve plan or an assessment plan.
  • frill-necked lizard — a large arboreal insectivorous Australian lizard, Chlamydosaurus kingi, having an erectile fold of skin around the neck: family Agamidae (agamas)
  • functional analysis — the branch of mathematics that deals with the theory of vector spaces and linear functionals.
  • functional calculus — the branch of symbolic logic that includes the sentential calculus and that deals with sentential functions and quantifiers and with logical relations between sentences containing quantifiers.
  • functional currency — Functional currency is the main currency used by a business.
  • functional database — (database, language)   A database which uses a functional language as its query language. Databases would seem to be an inappropriate application for functional languages since, a purely functional language would have to return a new copy of the entire database every time (part of) it was updated. To be practically scalable, the update mechanism must clearly be destructive rather than functional; however it is quite feasible for the query language to be purely functional so long as the database is considered as an argument. One approach to the update problem would use a monad to encapsulate database access and ensure it was single threaded. Alternative approaches have been suggested by Trinder, who suggests non-destructive updating with shared data structures, and Sutton who uses a variant of a Phil Wadler's linear type system. There are two main classes of functional database languages. The first is based upon Backus' FP language, of which FQL is probably the best known example. Adaplan is a more recent language which falls into this category. More recently, people have been working on languages which are syntactically very similar to modern functional programming languages, but which also provide all of the features of a database language, e.g. bulk data structures which can be incrementally updated, type systems which can be incrementally updated, and all data persisting in a database. Examples are PFL [Poulovassilis&Small, VLDB-91], and Machiavelli [Ohori et al, ACM SIGMOD Conference, 1998].
  • functional language — (language)   A language that supports and encourages functional programming.
  • functional medicine — individualized medical care that recognizes the interactions between genetic and environmental factors and between the body's interconnected systems.
  • general post office — (in the U.S. postal system) the main post office of a city, county, etc., that also has branch post offices. Abbreviation: G.P.O., GPO.
  • grandfather's clock — a pendulum floor clock having a case as tall as or taller than a person; tall-case clock; long-case clock.
  • great wall of china — a system of fortified walls with a roadway along the top, constructed as a defense for China against the nomads of the regions that are now Mongolia and Manchuria: completed in the 3rd century b.c., but later repeatedly modified and rebuilt. 2000 miles (3220 km) long.
  • guerrilla financing — the use of unconventional and marginally legal means to capitalize enterprises
  • gulf of carpentaria — a shallow inlet of the Arafura Sea, in N Australia between Arnhem Land and Cape York Peninsula
  • gulf of tehuantepec — an inlet of the Pacific on the south coast of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in S Mexico
  • halt and catch fire — (humour, processor)   (HCF) Any of several undocumented and semi-mythical machine instructions with destructive side-effects, supposedly included for test purposes on several well-known architectures going as far back as the IBM 360. The Motorola 6800 microprocessor was the first for which an HCF opcode became widely known. This instruction caused the processor to read every memory location sequentially until reset.
  • hyperfocal distance — the distance, at a given f number, between a camera lens and the nearest point (hyperfocal point) having satisfactory definition when focused at infinity.
  • imperial preference — a proposed system whereby free trade and levelled tariffs would exist between nations belonging to the British Commonwealth, in order to increase the prosperity of and unity between these nation
  • incomplete fracture — a fracture extending partly across the bone.
  • inglenook fireplace — a large fireplace with a space on either side
  • intentional fallacy — (in literary criticism) an assertion that the intended meaning of the author is not the only or most important meaning; a fallacy involving an assessment of a literary work based on the author's intended meaning rather than on actual response to the work.
  • interfacial tension — the surface tension at the interface of two liquids.
  • interferometrically — By means of interferometry.
  • italian east africa — a former Italian territory in E Africa, formed in 1936 by the merging of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland with newly conquered Ethiopia: taken by the British Imperial forces 1941.
  • jacques montgolfier — Jacques Étienne [zhahk ey-tyen] /ʒɑk eɪˈtyɛn/ (Show IPA), 1745–99, and his brother Joseph Michel [zhaw-zef mee-shel] /ʒɔˈzɛf miˈʃɛl/ (Show IPA) 1740–1810, French aeronauts: inventors of the first practical balloon 1783.
  • judicial conference — a conference of judges held to discuss improvements in methods or judicial procedure through court rules or otherwise.
  • lagrangian function — kinetic potential.
  • land of enchantment — New Mexico (used as a nickname).
  • landrum-griffin act — an act of Congress (1959) outlawing secondary boycotts, requiring public disclosure of the financial records of unions, and guaranteeing the use of secret ballots in union voting.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • lyon office of arms — Heralds' Office.
  • make oneself scarce — insufficient to satisfy the need or demand; not abundant: Meat and butter were scarce during the war.
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