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18-letter words containing f, e, n, s

  • corps of engineers — a branch of the U.S. Army responsible for military and many civil engineering projects.
  • creeping featurism — (jargon)   /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ (Or "feature creep") A systematic tendency to load more chrome and features onto systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed when originally designed. "The main problem with BSD Unix has always been creeping featurism." More generally, creeping featurism is the tendency for anything to become more complicated because people keep saying "Gee, it would be even better if it had this feature too". The result is usually a patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra little feature to help someone, and then another, and another, .... When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a cancer. Usually this term is used to describe computer programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the IRS 1040 form, and new cars. A similar phenomenon sometimes afflicts conscious redesigns; see second-system effect. See also creeping elegance.
  • crocodile-infested — full of crocodiles
  • dangerous offender — an offender who is deemed by a court of law to be likely to engage in further violent conduct, and who thus becomes eligible for an indefinite prison sentence
  • data transfer rate — (communications)   (Or "throughput, data rate", "transmission rate") The amount of data transferred in one direction over a link divided by the time taken to transfer it, usually expressed in bits per second (bps), bytes per second (Bps) or baud. The link may be anything from an interface to a hard disk to a radio transmission from a satellite. Where data transfer is not continuous throughout the given time interval, the data transfer rate is thus an average rate that will be lower than the peak rate. The peak or maximum possible rate may itself be lower than the capacity of the communication channel if the channel is shared, or part of the signal is not considered as data, e.g. checksum or routing information. When applied to data rate, the multiplier prefixes "kilo-", "mega-", "giga-", etc. (and their abbreviations, "k", "M", "G", etc.) always denote powers of 1000. For example, 64 kbps is 64,000 bits per second. This contrasts with units of storage where they stand for powers of 1024, e.g. 1 KB = 1024 bytes. The other important characteristic of a channel is its latency. The bandwidth of a channel determines the data transfer rate but is a different characteristic, measured in Hertz. [Relationship?]
  • dead man's fingers — a soft coral, Alcyonium digitatum, with long finger-like polyps
  • dead-man's fingers — any of various fungi, sponges, plant roots, animal parts, etc., having fingerlike projections and a pale or dull color, as the gray-black woodland fungus Xylaria polymorpha or the whitish spongy gills of a food crab.
  • deep-sea fisherman — a person who takes part in deep-sea fishing
  • defense calculator — IBM 701
  • defensive medicine — the practice by a doctor of ordering extensive, often unnecessary tests in order to minimize liability if accused of negligence
  • deficiency disease — any condition, such as pellagra, beriberi, or scurvy, produced by a lack of vitamins or other essential substances
  • deliver oneself of — to speak with deliberation or at length
  • diaminofluorescein — (organic compound) A fluorescein into which two amino groups have been substituted.
  • disenfranchisement — to disfranchise.
  • disidentifications — Plural form of disidentification.
  • distress frequency — a radio frequency band reserved for emergency signals from aircraft or ships in distress.
  • do oneself justice — If you do yourself justice, you do something as well as you are capable of doing it.
  • duty-free shopping — the making of duty-free purchases
  • dwarf storage unit — (humour)   (DSU) An IBM term for a cupboard.
  • dysfunctionalities — Plural form of dysfunctionality.
  • economies of scale — Economies of scale are the financial advantages that a company gains when it produces large quantities of products.
  • eleanor of castile — 1246–90, Spanish wife of Edward I of England. Eleanor Crosses were erected at each place at which her body rested between Nottingham, where she died, and London, where she is buried
  • essence of violets — an alcoholic solution derived from violets, used as perfume
  • fall on one's feet — a plural of foot.
  • false imprisonment — the unlawful restraint of a person from exercising the right to freedom of movement.
  • fantasy basketball — imagination, especially when extravagant and unrestrained.
  • far eastern region — former name of Khabarovsk.
  • farewell-to-spring — a slender, showy plant, Clarkia amoena, of the evening primrose family, native to western North America, having satiny, cup-shaped, lilac-crimson or reddish-pink flowers and roundish fruit.
  • feather one's nest — one of the horny structures forming the principal covering of birds, consisting typically of a hard, tubular portion attached to the body and tapering into a thinner, stemlike portion bearing a series of slender, barbed processes that interlock to form a flat structure on each side.
  • federal funds rate — The federal funds rate is the overnight rate between banks.
  • feeping creaturism — /fee'ping kree"ch*r-izm/ A deliberate spoonerism for creeping featurism, meant to imply that the system or program in question has become a misshapen creature of hacks. This term isn"t really well defined, but it sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. It is probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in the dark making their customary noises.
  • fehling's solution — a blue solution of copper sulfate, Rochelle salt, and sodium hydroxide, used to test for the presence of a sugar, aldehyde, etc.
  • feldenkrais method — a system of gentle movements that promote flexibility, coordination, and self-awareness
  • ferdinand schiller — Ferdinand Canning Scott [kan-ing] /ˈkæn ɪŋ/ (Show IPA), 1864–1937, English philosopher in the U.S.
  • fermat's principle — Optics. the law that the path taken by a ray of light in going from one point to another point will be the path that requires the least time.
  • fibonacci sequence — (mathematics)   The infinite sequence of numbers beginning 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ... in which each term is the sum of the two terms preceding it. The ratio of successive Fibonacci terms tends to the golden ratio, namely (1 + sqrt 5)/2.
  • field of quotients — a field whose elements are pairs of elements of a given commutative integral domain such that the second element of each pair is not zero. The field of rational numbers is the field of quotients of the integral domain of integers.
  • filchner ice shelf — an ice barrier in Antarctica, in the SE Weddell Sea, bordered on the W by Berkner Island.
  • filename extension — (filename extension)   The portion of a filename, following the final point, which indicates the kind of data stored in the file - the file type. Many operating systems use filename extensions, e.g. Unix, VMS, MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows. They are usually from one to three letters (some sad old OSes support no more than three). Examples include "c" for C source code, "ps" for PostScript, "txt" for arbitrary text. Apart from informing the user what type of content the file holds, filename extensions are typically used to decide which program to launch when a file is "run", e.g. by double-clicking it in a GUI file browser. They are also used by Unix's make to determine how to build one kind of file from another. Compare: MIME type.
  • fill someone in on — to provide someone with additional facts, details, etc. about
  • financial services — A company or organization that provides financial services is able to help you do things such as make investments or buy a pension or mortgage.
  • finite-dimensional — (of a vector space) having a basis consisting of a finite number of elements.
  • fire and brimstone — When people talk about fire and brimstone, they are referring to hell and how they think people are punished there after death.
  • fire-and-brimstone — threatening punishment in the hereafter: a fire-and-brimstone sermon.
  • first and foremost — primarily
  • first year infants — a class for young children who have just started school
  • fischer von erlach — Johann Bernhard [yaw-hahn bern-hahrt] /ˈyɔ hɑn ˈbɛrn hɑrt/ (Show IPA), 1656–1723, Austrian architect.
  • fishing expedition — a legal proceeding mainly for the purpose of interrogating an adversary, or of examining his or her property and documents, in order to gain useful information.
  • fissure of rolando — central sulcus.
  • fitness instructor — physical trainer, exercise teacher
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