19-letter words containing f, u, s
- juan de fuca strait — strait between Vancouver Island and NW Wash.: c. 100 mi (161 km) long
- knights of columbus — an international fraternal and benevolent organization of Roman Catholic men, founded in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1882.
- 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.
- life-support system — A life-support system is the same as a life-support machine.
- 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.
- lose in the shuffle — to leave out or disregard in the confusion of things
- 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.
- malicious falsehood — a lie told by someone who knows the lie is false or knows it will do harm to the person it is concerning
- master of foxhounds — the person responsible for the conduct of a fox hunt and to whom all members of the hunt and its staff are responsible. Abbreviation: M.F.H.
- means of production — resources: equipment, workers
- measure for measure — a comedy (1604) by Shakespeare.
- membership function — fuzzy subset
- mid-autumn festival — a Chinese festival that is held to celebrate the end of the summer harvest, when the crops have been gathered.
- missing fundamental — a tone, not present in the sound received by the ear, whose pitch is that of the difference between the two tones that are sounded
- modulus of rigidity — shear modulus.
- mother-of-thousands — strawberry geranium.
- 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.
- neufchâtel (cheese) — a soft white cheese prepared from whole milk or skim milk and eaten fresh or cured
- 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.
- on (or off) course — moving (or not moving) in the intended direction
- 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.
- out of the question — a sentence in an interrogative form, addressed to someone in order to get information in reply.
- parainfluenza virus — any of a group of viruses that cause respiratory infections with influenza-like symptoms, esp in children
- performance figures — the statistics that indicate how well or badly a company or organization has performed
- peroxysulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).
- persian gulf states — group of Arab sheikdoms along the Persian Gulf: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, & United Arab Emirates
- 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
- potassium bisulfate — a colorless, crystalline, water-soluble solid, KHSO 4 , used chiefly in the conversion of tartrates to bitartrates.
- presumption of fact — a presumption based on experience or knowledge of the relationship between a known fact and a fact inferred from it.
- profitability study — a study of how much profit a company, organization, etc, makes or how profitable it is
- pseudo-professional — following an occupation as a means of livelihood or for gain: a professional builder.
- pugwash conferences — international peace conferences of scientists held regularly to discuss world problems: Nobel peace prize 1995 awarded to Joseph Rotblat (1908–2005) , one of the founders of the conferences, secretary-general (1957–73), and president (1988–97)
- put a figure on sth — When you put a figure on an amount, you say exactly how much it is.
- put one's finger on — any of the terminal members of the hand, especially one other than the thumb.
- put one's foot down — (in vertebrates) the terminal part of the leg, below the ankle joint, on which the body stands and moves.
- queen street farmer — a businessman who runs a farm, often for a tax loss
- queensland lungfish — a lungfish, Neoceratodus forsteri, reaching a length of six feet: occurs in Queensland rivers but introduced elsewhere
- radius of curvature — the absolute value of the reciprocal of the curvature at a point on a curve.
- reflux oesophagitis — inflammation of the gullet caused by regurgitation of stomach acids, producing heartburn: may be associated with a hiatus hernia
- republic of letters — the collective body of literary people.
- respiratory failure — a condition in which the respiratory system is unable to provide an adequate supply of oxygen or to remove carbon dioxide efficiently
- ruffini's corpuscle — an end organ of certain sensory neurons that branches out parallel to the skin and responds to steady pressure.
- saccharofarinaceous — pertaining to or consisting of sugar and meal.
- safety-squeeze-play — Baseball. Also called suicide squeeze, suicide squeeze play. a play executed when there is a runner on third base and usually not more than one out, in which the runner starts for home as soon as the pitcher makes a motion to pitch, and the batter bunts. Also called safety squeeze, safety squeeze play. a similar play in which the runner on third base waits until the batter has successfully bunted before trying to score.
- school of the squad — an institution where instruction is given, especially to persons under college age: The children are at school.
- scratch the surface — examine superficially
- sea of tranquillity — Astronomy. Mare Tranquillitatis.