19-letter words containing f, e, l, o, n, s
- four eyes principle — the requirement that a business transaction be approved by at least two individuals
- fractal compression — (algorithm) A technique for encoding images using fractals.
- free alongside quay — (of a shipment of goods) delivered to the quay without charge to the buyer
- free alongside ship — (of a shipment of goods) delivered to the dock without charge to the buyer, but excluding the cost of loading onto the vessel
- 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].
- 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.
- giovanni da fiesole — Giovanni da [Italian jaw-vahn-nee dah] /Italian dʒɔˈvɑn ni dɑ/ (Show IPA), Angelico, Fra.
- grandfather's clock — a pendulum floor clock having a case as tall as or taller than a person; tall-case clock; long-case clock.
- greenhouse whitefly — See under whitefly.
- hang on the lips of — to listen to with close attention
- health professional — a person trained to work in any field of physical or mental health.
- heat of sublimation — the heat absorbed by one gram or unit mass of a substance in the process of changing, at a constant temperature and pressure, from a solid to a gaseous state. Compare sublime (def 10).
- helsinki conference — Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.
- hold no terrors for — If something holds no terrors for you, you are not at all frightened or worried by it.
- house of councilors — the upper house of the Japanese diet.
- 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.
- in the light of sth — If something is possible in the light of particular information, it is only possible because you have this information.
- informal settlement — a squatter camp
- interfacial tension — the surface tension at the interface of two liquids.
- islet of langerhans — any of several masses of endocrine cells in the pancreas that secrete insulin, somatostatin, and glucagon.
- 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.
- ladies-of-the-night — plural of lady-of-the-night.
- 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.
- lay one's finger on — to indicate, identify, or locate accurately
- letters of credence — credentials issued to a diplomat or other governmental representative for presentation to the country to which he or she is sent.
- 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 up one's voice — to speak out loudly
- limit of resolution — the capacity of an optical system to resolve point objects as separate images.
- line-of-battle ship — ship of the line.
- live one's own life — If you live your own life, you live in the way that you want to and accept responsibility for your actions and decisions, without other people's advice or interference.
- look (like) oneself — to appear to be in normal health, spirits, etc.
- lose in the shuffle — to leave out or disregard in the confusion of things
- loss-of-containment — Loss-of-containment happens when a fluid which is usually contained somewhere escapes from that place.
- low insertion force — (hardware) (LIF) PGA/SPGA sockets with no handle. The integrated circuit is simply pushed into the socket, and levered out to remove. Most motherboard processor sockets are now ZIF rather than LIF.
- luminous efficiency — the perceived brightness of light as a ratio of the total luminous flux to total radiant flux of the source; a measure of brightness obtained by dividing the source's luminous flux by the consumption of its energy.
- 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.
- mary wollstonecraft — Mary (Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) 1759–97, English author and feminist (mother of Mary Shelley).
- network file system — (networking, operating system) (NFS) A protocol developed by Sun Microsystems, and defined in RFC 1094, which allows a computer to access files over a network as if they were on its local disks. This protocol has been incorporated in products by more than two hundred companies, and is now a de facto standard. NFS is implemented using a connectionless protocol (UDP) in order to make it stateless. See Nightmare File System, WebNFS.
- non-transferability — to convey or remove from one place, person, etc., to another: He transferred the package from one hand to the other.
- nordrhein-westfalen — German name of North Rhine-Westphalia.
- norfolk island pine — a coniferous evergreen tree, Araucaria heterophylla (or A. excelsa), having whorled branches and needlelike foliage, widely cultivated as a houseplant.
- on someone's behalf — in / on behalf of, as a representative of or a proxy for: On behalf of my colleagues, I address you tonight.
- on the threshold of — If you are on the threshold of something exciting or new, you are about to experience it.
- open the floodgates — If events open the floodgates to something, they make it possible for that thing to happen much more often or much more seriously than before.
- own flesh and blood — If you say that someone is your own flesh and blood, you are emphasizing that they are a member of your family.
- personal watercraft — a jet-propelled boat ridden like a motorcycle.
- phacoemulsification — the removal of a cataract by first liquefying the affected lens with ultrasonic vibrations and then extracting it by suction.
- phakoemulsification — the removal of a cataract by first liquefying the affected lens with ultrasonic vibrations and then extracting it by suction.
- pistol-handle knife — a table knife, especially of the 18th century, having a slightly curved handle resembling the grip of a flintlock pistol.