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19-letter words containing f, e, t, a

  • mother-of-thousands — strawberry geranium.
  • nasty piece of work — malicious person
  • neats vs. scruffies — (artificial intelligence, jargon)   The label used to refer to one of the continuing holy wars in artificial intelligence research. This conflict tangles together two separate issues. One is the relationship between human reasoning and AI; "neats" tend to try to build systems that "reason" in some way identifiably similar to the way humans report themselves as doing, while "scruffies" profess not to care whether an algorithm resembles human reasoning in the least as long as it works. More importantly, neats tend to believe that logic is king, while scruffies favour looser, more ad-hoc methods driven by empirical knowledge. To a neat, scruffy methods appear promiscuous, successful only by accident and not productive of insights about how intelligence actually works; to a scruffy, neat methods appear to be hung up on formalism and irrelevant to the hard-to-capture "common sense" of living intelligences.
  • negation by failure — An extralogical feature of Prolog and other logic programming languages in which failure of unification is treated as establishing the negation of a relation. For example, if Ronald Reagan is not in our database and we asked if he was an American, Prolog would answer "no".
  • nerve growth factor — a protein that promotes the growth, organization, and maintenance of sympathetic and some sensory nerve cells. Abbreviation: NGF.
  • neufchâtel (cheese) — a soft white cheese prepared from whole milk or skim milk and eaten fresh or cured
  • non-confidentiality — spoken, written, acted on, etc., in strict privacy or secrecy; secret: a confidential remark.
  • non-transferability — to convey or remove from one place, person, etc., to another: He transferred the package from one hand to the other.
  • nonforfeiture value — any benefit, as cash or other form of insurance, available to a life-insurance policyholder who discontinues premium payments on the policy.
  • nordrhein-westfalen — German name of North Rhine-Westphalia.
  • north pacific ocean — the northern part of the Pacific Ocean, extending from the equator to the Arctic Ocean.
  • not care/give a fig — If you say that someone doesn't care a fig or doesn't give a fig about something, you are emphasizing that they think it is unimportant or that they are not interested in it.
  • objectfuscated code — (humour, programming)   Object-oriented code which has been abstracted to so many levels that no-one can understand it anymore. A play on obfuscated code.
  • office-block ballot — a ballot on which the candidates are listed alphabetically, with or without their party designations, in columns under the office for which they were nominated.
  • on first name terms — If two people are on first-name terms, they know each other well enough to call each other by their first names, rather than having to use a more formal title.
  • one after the other — one at a time
  • 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.
  • open-hearth furnace — a process of steelmaking in which the charge is laid in a furnace (open-hearth furnace) on a shallow hearth and heated directly by burning gas as well as radiatively by the furnace walls.
  • orange flower water — a distilled infusion of orange blossom, used in cakes, confectionery, etc
  • order of the garter — the highest order of British knighthood, instituted by Edward III about 1348.
  • oriental fruit moth — a moth, Grapholitha molesta, introduced into the U.S. from Asia, the larvae of which infest and feed on the twigs and fruits of peach, plum, and related trees.
  • out of the ordinary — of no special quality or interest; commonplace; unexceptional: One novel is brilliant, the other is decidedly ordinary; an ordinary person.
  • pancreatic fibrosis — cystic fibrosis.
  • parting of the ways — When there is a parting of the ways, two or more people or groups of people stop working together or travelling together.
  • paschen-back effect — a splitting of spectral lines observed when the source of a radiation is subjected to a strong magnetic field, caused when the vectors associated with the spin and orbital angular momentum exhibit individual rather than common precession.
  • patent infringement — breach of copyright
  • perfoliate bellwort — a slender plant, Uvularia perfoliata, of the lily family, of eastern North America, having pale yellow, bell-shaped flowers.
  • performance anxiety — the stage fright that a person feels when they are about to perform (a play, piece of music etc) in front of an audience
  • performance targets — the expected or predicted success level of an individual, company or organization
  • persian gulf states — group of Arab sheikdoms along the Persian Gulf: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, & United Arab Emirates
  • 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.
  • photovoltaic effect — the phenomenon in which the incidence of light or other electromagnetic radiation upon the junction of two dissimilar materials, as a metal and a semiconductor, induces the generation of an electromotive force.
  • piece of the action — the process or state of acting or of being active: The machine is not in action now.
  • pirates of penzance — an operetta (1879) by Sir William S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan.
  • pistol-handle knife — a table knife, especially of the 18th century, having a slightly curved handle resembling the grip of a flintlock pistol.
  • plastic deformation — In plastic deformation a material changes shape when a stress is applied to it and does not go back to its original state when the stress is removed.
  • play fast and loose — a dramatic composition or piece; drama.
  • play footsie (with) — to touch feet or rub knees (with) in a caressing way, as under the table
  • pocket-handkerchief — handkerchief (def 1).
  • point the finger at — to accuse or blame
  • post-and-rail fence — a fence constructed of upright wooden posts with horizontal timber slotted through it
  • potassium bisulfate — a colorless, crystalline, water-soluble solid, KHSO 4 , used chiefly in the conversion of tartrates to bitartrates.
  • preferential voting — a system of voting designed to permit the voter to indicate an order of preference for the candidates on the ballot.
  • presumption of fact — a presumption based on experience or knowledge of the relationship between a known fact and a fact inferred from it.
  • private first class — a soldier ranking above a private and below a corporal or specialist fourth class in the U.S. Army, and above a private and below a lance corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps.
  • professionalization — to give a professional character or status to; make into or establish as a profession.
  • put a figure on sth — When you put a figure on an amount, you say exactly how much it is.
  • put on the feed bag — Also called nose bag. a bag for feeding horses, placed before the mouth and fastened around the head with straps.
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