19-letter words containing f, i, a, s, c
- miracle of st. mark — a painting (1548) by Tintoretto.
- 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.
- on cue/as if on cue — If you say that something happened on cue or as if on cue, you mean that it happened just when it was expected to happen, or just at the right time.
- pancreatic fibrosis — cystic fibrosis.
- performance figures — the statistics that indicate how well or badly a company or organization has performed
- peroxysulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).
- 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.
- pillars of hercules — the two promontories at the E end of the Strait of Gibraltar: the Rock of Gibraltar on the European side and the Jebel Musa on the African side; according to legend, formed by Hercules
- pirates of penzance — an operetta (1879) by Sir William S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan.
- 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.
- post-and-rail fence — a fence constructed of upright wooden posts with horizontal timber slotted through it
- 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.
- professional advice — advice given by someone trained in a particular and relevant profession or job
- professional school — a postgraduate school or college which trains students for a particular profession
- radius of curvature — the absolute value of the reciprocal of the curvature at a point on a curve.
- research fellowship — the position or office of someone who conducts academic research into a subject at a university, etc
- saccharofarinaceous — pertaining to or consisting of sugar and meal.
- sacrifice operative — a euphemistic term for a suicide bomber
- san francisco peaks — a mountain mass in N Arizona: highest point in the state, Humphrey's Peak, 12,611 feet (3845 meters).
- savings certificate — a certificate of deposit for a specific sum of money in a savings account, especially a deposit for a fixed term at a specified interest rate.
- scientific notation — a method for expressing a given quantity as a number having significant digits necessary for a specified degree of accuracy, multiplied by 10 to the appropriate power, as 1385.62 written as 1.386 × 10 3 .
- secondary infection — an infection resulting from another infection
- self identification — identification of oneself with some other person or thing.
- self-congratulating — the expression or feeling of uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one's own accomplishment, good fortune, etc.; complacency.
- self-congratulation — the expression or feeling of uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one's own accomplishment, good fortune, etc.; complacency.
- self-discrimination — an act or instance of discriminating, or of making a distinction.
- self-identification — identification of oneself with some other person or thing.
- sentential function — an expression that contains one or more variables and becomes meaningful when suitable constant terms are substituted for them.
- sharp-focus realism — photorealism.
- shopping facilities — shops or other retail services
- siberian forest cat — a breed of powerfully-built long-haired cat, typically tabby with a white ruff and white paws
- significant figures — the figures of a number that express a magnitude to a specified degree of accuracy, rounding up or down the final figure
- son-of-a-bitch stew — (in the Old West) a stew often prepared by chuck-wagon cooks for working cowboys, containing tripe and often also the heart, liver, brains, kidney, etc., of a slaughtered steer.
- south african dutch — the Boers.
- south pacific ocean — the part of the Pacific Ocean extending S from the Equator to the Antarctic continent.
- south san francisco — a city in central California.
- spanish west africa — a former overseas territory of Spain in NW Africa: divided in 1958 into the overseas provinces of Ifni and Spanish Sahara
- specific characters — the persistent features that distinguish one species from all others
- specific resistance — resistivity (def 2).
- specific-resistance — the power or property of resistance.
- specular reflection — Specular reflection is reflection of heat or light in which the angles of different parts of the surface are important.
- speculative fiction — a broad literary genre encompassing any fiction with supernatural, fantastical, or futuristic elements
- subsistence farming — farming whose products are intended to provide for the basic needs of the farmer, with little surplus for marketing.
- supercritical fluid — A supercritical fluid is a fluid at a temperature and pressure at which there is no difference between liquid and gas.
- surface effect ship — a large, ship-size air cushion vehicle operated over water.
- switchblade (knife) — a large jackknife that snaps open when a release button on the handle is pressed
- teaching fellowship — a fellowship providing a student in a graduate school with free tuition and expenses and stipulating that the student assume some teaching duties in return.