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20-letter words containing f, e, c, i

  • 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
  • financial instrument — A financial instrument is a document or contract that can be traded in a market, that represents an asset to one party and a liability or equity to the other.
  • financial management — supervision and handling of the financial affairs of an organization
  • financial statements — Financial statements are all of the reports that show how a company is performing for a certain period.
  • finite state machine — (mathematics, algorithm, theory)   (FSM or "Finite State Automaton", "transducer") An abstract machine consisting of a set of states (including the initial state), a set of input events, a set of output events, and a state transition function. The function takes the current state and an input event and returns the new set of output events and the next state. Some states may be designated as "terminal states". The state machine can also be viewed as a function which maps an ordered sequence of input events into a corresponding sequence of (sets of) output events. A deterministic FSM (DFA) is one where the next state is uniquely determinied by a single input event. The next state of a nondeterministic FSM (NFA) depends not only on the current input event, but also on an arbitrary number of subsequent input events. Until these subsequent events occur it is not possible to determine which state the machine is in. It is possible to automatically translate any nondeterministic FSM into a deterministic one which will produce the same output given the same input. Each state in the DFA represents the set of states the NFA might be in at a given time. In a probabilistic FSM [proper name?], there is a predetermined probability of each next state given the current state and input (compare Markov chain). The terms "acceptor" and "transducer" are used particularly in language theory where automata are often considered as abstract machines capable of recognising a language (certain sequences of input events). An acceptor has a single Boolean output and accepts or rejects the input sequence by outputting true or false respectively, whereas a transducer translates the input into a sequence of output events. FSMs are used in computability theory and in some practical applications such as regular expressions and digital logic design. See also state transition diagram, Turing Machine.
  • firearms certificate — a certificate that entitles the holder to own and keep a firearm
  • first earl of cromer — 1st Earl of, Evelyn Baring.
  • first-cause argument — an argument for the existence of God, asserting the necessity of an uncaused cause of all subsequent series of causes, on the assumption that an infinite regress is impossible.
  • five-elements school — Yin-Yang School.
  • 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.
  • fixed-rate financing — a loan system in which the amount paid back does not fluctuate according to interest rated
  • flame-fusion process — Verneuil process.
  • flight data recorder — a recording device that records relevant data during an aircraft's flight
  • floodlight projector — a powerful lamp having a reflector curved to produce a floodlight.
  • 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-field analysis — a decision-making technique, often presented graphically, that identifies all the positive and negative forces impinging on a problem
  • four-colour glossies — 1. Literature created by marketroids that allegedly contains technical specs but which is in fact as superficial as possible without being totally content-free. "Forget the four-colour glossies, give me the tech ref manuals." Often applied as an indication of superficiality even when the material is printed on ordinary paper in black and white. Four-colour-glossy manuals are *never* useful for finding a problem. 2. [rare] Applied by extension to manual pages that don't contain enough information to diagnose why the program doesn't produce the expected or desired output.
  • frederick barbarossa — ("Frederick Barbarossa") 1123?–90, king of Germany 1152–90; king of Italy 1152–90: emperor of the Holy Roman Empire 1152–90.
  • frederick william ii — 1744–97, king of Prussia 1786–97.
  • frederick william iv — 1795–1861, king of Prussia 1840–61 (brother of William I of Prussia).
  • freefall parachuting — a variety of parachuting in which the jumper manoeuvres in free fall before opening the parachute
  • frequency modulation — FM.
  • friedrich max müller — Friedrich Max [free-drik maks;; German free-drikh mahks] /ˈfri drɪk mæks;; German ˈfri drɪx mɑks/ (Show IPA), 1823–1900, English Sanskrit scholar and philologist born in Germany.
  • front-to-back engine — an engine in which the crankshaft is arranged front to back along the axis of the vehicle
  • frosting on the cake — a sweet mixture, cooked or uncooked, for coating or filling cakes, cookies, and the like; icing.
  • fully-fitted kitchen — a kitchen fitted with units and appliances such as an oven, dishwasher, etc
  • fulminate of mercury — a gray, crystalline solid, Hg(CNO) 2 , used chiefly in the manufacture of commercial and military detonators.
  • fundamental particle — elementary particle.
  • genetically modified — biologically altered
  • group life insurance — a form of life insurance available to members of a group, typically employees of a company, under a master policy.
  • 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.
  • hurricane-force wind — a wind, not necessarily a hurricane, having a speed of more than 72 miles per hour (32 m/sec): the strongest of the winds.
  • imperfect contrition — sincere penitence or remorse.
  • in a class by itself — unique
  • in flagrante delicto — Law. in the very act of committing the offense.
  • independence of path — the property of a function for which the line integral has the same value along all curves between two specified points.
  • infectious hepatitis — hepatitis A.
  • inferior conjunction — the alignment of an inferior planet between the sun and the earth.
  • information exchange — discussion that involves exchanging ideas and knowledge
  • instruction prefetch — (architecture)   A technique which attempts to minimise the time a processor spends waiting for instructions to be fetched from memory. Instructions following the one currently being executed are loaded into a prefetch queue when the processor's external bus is otherwise idle. If the processor executes a branch instruction or receives an interrupt then the queue must be flushed and reloaded from the new address. Instruction prefetch is often combined with pipelining in an attempt to keep the pipeline busy. By 1995 most processors used prefetching, e.g. Motorola 680x0, Intel 80x86.
  • intelligence officer — a military officer responsible for collecting and processing data on hostile forces, weather, and terrain.
  • interference pattern — a series of alternating dark and bright bands produced as a result of light interference.
  • isochronous transfer — isochronous
  • joint life insurance — life insurance covering two or more persons, the benefits of which are paid after the first person dies.
  • justice of the peace — a local public officer, usually having jurisdiction to try and determine minor civil and criminal cases and to hold preliminary examinations of persons accused of more serious crimes, and having authority to administer oaths, solemnize marriages, etc.
  • justifiable homicide — murder committed under extenuating circumstances
  • keep a straight face — look serious, avoid smiling
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