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20-letter words containing f, i, s

  • college of cardinals — the collective body of cardinals having the function of electing and advising the pope
  • commissioned officer — a military officer holding a commission, such as Second Lieutenant in the British Army, Acting Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, Pilot Officer in the Royal Air Force, and officers of all ranks senior to these
  • commune with oneself — to think; ponder
  • confectioners' sugar — Confectioners' sugar is very fine white sugar that is used for making icing and candy.
  • conflict of interest — a conflict between one's obligation to the public good and one's self-interest, as in the case of a public officeholder who owns stock in a company seeking government contracts
  • conservation of mass — the principle that the total mass of any isolated system is constant and is independent of any chemical and physical changes taking place within the system
  • context of situation — the totality of extralinguistic features having relevance to a communicative act.
  • corruption of minors — the criminal offence of inducing people below the age of consent to engage in sexual activity
  • cost-of-living index — a numerical scale by means of which cost-of-living levels can be compared with a base number
  • council of ministers — the EU's most important decision-making body
  • craft apprenticeship — a period of training for a skilled trade in industry, such as for a plumber or electrician
  • crisis of confidence — a serious loss of confidence
  • curry favour with sb — If one person tries to curry favour with another, they do things in order to try to gain their support or co-operation.
  • cut of someone's jib — someone's manner, behaviour, style, etc
  • darkfield microscope — kind of microscope
  • de facto segregation — racial, ethnic, or other segregation resulting from societal differences between groups, as socioeconomic or political disparity, without institutionalized legislation intended to segregate.
  • definite description — a description that is modified by the definite article or a possessive, such as the woman in white or Rosemary's baby
  • difference threshold — the minimum difference between two stimuli that is just detectable by a person
  • differential housing — the casing that houses the differential of a motor vehicle
  • diogenes (of sinope) — 412?-323? b.c.; Gr. philosopher: noted for founding the Cynical school of philosophy
  • discounted cash flow — a technique for appraising an investment that takes into account the different values of future returns according to when they will be received
  • district of columbia — a federal area in the E United States, on the Potomac, coextensive with the federal capital, Washington. 69 sq. mi. (179 sq. km). Abbreviation: DC (for use with zip code), D.C.
  • doctor of philosophy — Also called doctorate. the highest degree awarded by a graduate school, usually to a person who has completed at least three years of graduate study and a dissertation approved by a board of professors.
  • drink with the flies — to drink alone
  • effective resistance — the resistance to an alternating current, expressed as the ratio of the power dissipated to the square of the effective current.
  • entry qualifications — the qualifications people wishing to enter an organization, university, etc, have to have
  • erythema infectiosum — a mild infectious disease of childhood, caused by a virus, characterized by fever and a red rash spreading from the cheeks to the limbs and trunk
  • essential fatty acid — any fatty acid required by the body in manufacturing prostaglandins, found in such foods as oily fish and nuts
  • european social fund — one of the four Structural Funds of the European Union which aims to support employment and the economic and social well-being of EU member countries
  • exercise, left as an — Used to complete a proof in technical books when one doesn't mind a handwave, or to avoid one entirely. The complete phrase is: "The proof [or "the rest"] is left as an exercise for the reader." This comment *has* occasionally been attached to unsolved research problems by authors possessed of either an evil sense of humour or a vast faith in the capabilities of their audiences.
  • feather in one's cap — 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 constitution — Constitution of the United States.
  • field ion microscope — a device in which the atomic structure of the surface of a conductor is made visible by introducing helium gas into the device and applying a high voltage to ionize and accelerate the gas toward a fluorescent screen.
  • field-ion microscope — a device in which the atomic structure of the surface of a conductor is made visible by introducing helium gas into the device and applying a high voltage to ionize and accelerate the gas toward a fluorescent screen.
  • fight for one's life — Someone who is fighting for their life is making a great effort to stay alive, either when they are being physically attacked or when they are very ill.
  • file descriptor leak — (programming)   (Or "fd leak" /F D leek/) A kind of programming bug analogous to a core leak, in which a program fails to close file descriptors ("fd"s) after file operations are completed, and thus eventually runs out of them. See leak.
  • fill someone's shoes — an external covering for the human foot, usually of leather and consisting of a more or less stiff or heavy sole and a lighter upper part ending a short distance above, at, or below the ankle.
  • financial consultant — A financial consultant is the same as a financial adviser.
  • financial instrument — A financial instrument is a document or contract that can be traded in a market, that represents an asset to one party and a liability or equity to the other.
  • financial statements — Financial statements are all of the reports that show how a company is performing for a certain period.
  • finite state grammar — a simplified form of transformational grammar devised by Noam Chomsky
  • finite state machine — (mathematics, algorithm, theory)   (FSM or "Finite State Automaton", "transducer") An abstract machine consisting of a set of states (including the initial state), a set of input events, a set of output events, and a state transition function. The function takes the current state and an input event and returns the new set of output events and the next state. Some states may be designated as "terminal states". The state machine can also be viewed as a function which maps an ordered sequence of input events into a corresponding sequence of (sets of) output events. A deterministic FSM (DFA) is one where the next state is uniquely determinied by a single input event. The next state of a nondeterministic FSM (NFA) depends not only on the current input event, but also on an arbitrary number of subsequent input events. Until these subsequent events occur it is not possible to determine which state the machine is in. It is possible to automatically translate any nondeterministic FSM into a deterministic one which will produce the same output given the same input. Each state in the DFA represents the set of states the NFA might be in at a given time. In a probabilistic FSM [proper name?], there is a predetermined probability of each next state given the current state and input (compare Markov chain). The terms "acceptor" and "transducer" are used particularly in language theory where automata are often considered as abstract machines capable of recognising a language (certain sequences of input events). An acceptor has a single Boolean output and accepts or rejects the input sequence by outputting true or false respectively, whereas a transducer translates the input into a sequence of output events. FSMs are used in computability theory and in some practical applications such as regular expressions and digital logic design. See also state transition diagram, Turing Machine.
  • firearms certificate — a certificate that entitles the holder to own and keep a firearm
  • first earl of cromer — 1st Earl of, Evelyn Baring.
  • first point of aries — the vernal equinox.
  • first world problems — If you say that someone has First World problems, you mean that their problems are not really very important.
  • first-cause argument — an argument for the existence of God, asserting the necessity of an uncaused cause of all subsequent series of causes, on the assumption that an infinite regress is impossible.
  • first-person shooter — a type of video game in which the player assumes the field of vision of the protagonist, so that the game camera includes the character's weapon, but the rest of the character model is not seen. Abbreviation: FPS.
  • fission-track dating — the dating of samples of minerals by comparing the tracks in them by fission fragments of the uranium nuclei they contain, before and after irradiation by neutrons
  • five-a-side football — a version of soccer with five players in each team
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