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20-letter words containing f, e, c, u, n

  • fundamental sequence — an infinite sequence, x 1 , x 2 , …, whose terms are points in Ek, in which there exists a point y such that the limit as n goes to infinity of xn = y if and only if for every ε>0, there exists a number N such that i > N and j > N implies | xi − xj |< ε. Also called Cauchy sequence, convergent sequence. Compare complete (def 10b).
  • group life insurance — a form of life insurance available to members of a group, typically employees of a company, under a master policy.
  • 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.
  • infectious hepatitis — hepatitis A.
  • inferior conjunction — the alignment of an inferior planet between the sun and the earth.
  • 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.
  • isochronous transfer — isochronous
  • joint life insurance — life insurance covering two or more persons, the benefits of which are paid after the first person dies.
  • joule-thomson effect — the change of temperature that a gas exhibits during a throttling process, shown by passing the gas through a small aperture or porous plug into a region of low pressure.
  • kentucky coffee tree — a tall North American tree, Gymnocladus dioica, of the legume family, the seeds of which (Kentucky coffee beans) were formerly used as a substitute for coffee beans.
  • knock out of the box — to make so many hits against (an opposing pitcher) as to cause the pitcher's removal
  • knock the tar out of — any of various dark-colored viscid products obtained by the destructive distillation of certain organic substances, as coal or wood.
  • land-office business — a lively, booming, expanding, or very profitable business.
  • life-support machine — A life-support machine is the equipment that is used to keep a person alive when they are very ill and cannot breathe without help.
  • liquidity preference — (in Keynesian economics) the degree of individual preference for cash over less liquid assets.
  • manufacturer's agent — an agent representing one or more manufacturers in selling related but noncompeting goods, usually on a commission basis and in a particular territory.
  • mary, queen of scots — family name Stuart. 1542–87, queen of Scotland (1542–67); daughter of James V of Scotland and Mary of Guise. She was married to Francis II of France (1558–60), her cousin Lord Darnley (1565–67), and the Earl of Bothwell (1567–71), who was commonly regarded as Darnley's murderer. She was forced to abdicate in favour of her son (later James VI of Scotland) and fled to England. Imprisoned by Elizabeth I until 1587, she was beheaded for plotting against the English crown
  • mitral insufficiency — abnormal closure of the mitral valve resulting in regurgitation of blood into the atrium and leading to reduced heart function or heart failure.
  • obfuscated c contest — (programming)   The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC) is an annual contest run since 1984 over Usenet by Landon Curt Noll and friends. The overall winner is whoever produces the most unreadable, creative, and bizarre (but working) C program. Various other prizes are awarded at the judges' whim. C's terse syntax and macro-preprocessor facilities give contestants a lot of maneuvering room. The winning programs often manage to be simultaneously funny, breathtaking works of art and horrible examples of how *not* to code in C. This relatively short and sweet hello, world program demonstrates obfuscated C: /* HELLO WORLD program * by Jack Applin and Robert Heckendorn, 1985 */ main(v,c)char**c;{for(v[c++]="Hello, world!\n)"; (!!c)[*c]&&(v--||--c&&execlp(*c,*c,c[!!c]+!!c,!c)); **c=!c)write(!!*c,*c,!!**c);} Here's another good one: /* Program to compute an approximation of pi * by Brian Westley, 1988 */ #define _ -F<00||--F-OO--; int F=00,OO=00; main(){F_OO();printf("%1.3f\n",4.*-F/OO/OO);}F_OO() { _-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_ } Note that this program works by computing its own area. For more digits, write a bigger program.
  • occupation franchise — the right of a tenant to vote in national and local elections
  • of (...) consequence — Something or someone of consequence is important or valuable. If something or someone is of no consequence, or of little consequence, they are not important or valuable.
  • of no/little account — If you say that something is of no account or of little account, you mean that it is very unimportant and is not worth considering.
  • on course/off course — If a ship or aircraft is on course, it is travelling along the correct route. If it is off course, it is no longer travelling along the correct route.
  • paper qualifications — qualifications gained through official examinations, etc, rather than through experience
  • peaceful coexistence — competition without war, or a policy of peace between nations of widely differing political systems and ideologies, especially between Communist and non-Communist nations: peaceful coexistence between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
  • permonosulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).
  • person of no account — (University of California at Santa Cruz) Used when referring to a person with no network address, frequently to forestall confusion. Most often as part of an introduction: "This is Bill, a person of no account, but he used to be [email protected]". Compare return from the dead.
  • recuperative furnace — a furnace having its incoming air heated by exhaust gases, the passage of air and gases through the furnace being always in the same direction.
  • recursive definition — a definition consisting of a set of rules such that by repeated application of the rules the meaning of the definiendum is uniquely determined in terms of ideas that are already familiar.
  • regenerative furnace — a furnace in which the incoming air is heated by regenerators.
  • request for comments — (standard)   (RFC) One of a series, begun in 1969, of numbered Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix communities. Few RFCs are standards but all Internet standards are recorded in RFCs. Perhaps the single most influential RFC has been RFC 822, the Internet electronic mail format standard. The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs even once adopted as standards. The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ANSI or ISO. Emblematic of some of these advantages is the existence of a flourishing tradition of "joke" RFCs; usually at least one a year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs have included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973), 748 ("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1 April 1978), and 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first was a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the TCP/IP documentation style, and the third a deadpan skewering of standards-document legalese, describing protocols for transmitting Internet data packets by carrier pigeon. The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work - they manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has grown to truly worldwide proportions. See also For Your Information, STD.
  • soft gelatin capsule — A soft gelatin capsule is a type of capsule that is usually used to contain medicine in the form of liquid or powder, and which dissolves more quickly than a hard gelatin capsule.
  • specific conductance — conductivity (def 2).
  • specific-conductance — conductivity (def 2).
  • strong nuclear force — an interaction between elementary particles responsible for the forces between nucleons in the nucleus. It operates at distances less than about 10–15 metres, and is about a hundred times more powerful than the electromagnetic interaction
  • sufficient condition — a statement whose truth is sufficient to guarantee the truth of a given statement
  • surface-active agent — any substance that when dissolved in water or an aqueous solution reduces its surface tension or the interfacial tension between it and another liquid.
  • tchebycheff equation — a differential equation of the form (1 − x 2) d 2 y/dx 2 − x dy/dx + n 2 y = 0, where n is any nonnegative integer.
  • the course of nature — the ordinary course of events
  • the gnomes of zurich — Swiss bankers and financiers
  • thomas of erceldoune — Thomas of, Thomas of Erceldoune.
  • thought transference — transference of thought by extrasensory means from the mind of one individual to another; telepathy.
  • uncertificated share — a share of a mutual fund credited to the account of a shareholder without the physical issuance of a certificate evidencing ownership.
  • unified screw thread — a screw thread system introduced for defence equipment (1939–44), in which the thread form and pitch were a compromise between British Standard Whitworth and American Standard Sellers: adopted by the International Standards Organization
  • uniform crime report — an annual report issued by the FBI that presents data on selected categories of crimes reported to the police. Abbreviation: UCR.
  • until further notice — If a situation is said to exist until further notice, it will continue for an uncertain length of time until someone changes it.
  • viscount northcliffe — Viscount, Alfred Charles William Harmsworth.
  • wardrobe malfunction — an embarrassing situation caused by the clothes a person is wearing
  • whole-life insurance — a type of insurance with a savings element that is guaranteed to pay out on death provided premiums have been paid as required by the policy
  • zone of accumulation — B horizon.
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