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20-letter words containing f, u, s

  • mitral insufficiency — abnormal closure of the mitral valve resulting in regurgitation of blood into the atrium and leading to reduced heart function or heart failure.
  • molybdenum disulfide — a black crystalline powder, MoS 2 , insoluble in water, used as a lubricant and as a hydrogenation catalyst.
  • most general unifier — (logic)   If U is the most general unifier of a set of expressions then any other unifier, V, can be expressed as V = UW, where W is another substitution. See also unification.
  • music of the spheres — a music, imperceptible to human ears, formerly supposed to be produced by the movements of the spheres or heavenly bodies.
  • naturalistic fallacy — the supposed fallacy of inferring evaluative conclusions from purely factual premises
  • new zealand fur seal — an Australasian seal, Arctocephalus forsteri
  • not out of the woods — If something or someone is not out of the woods yet, they are still having difficulties or problems.
  • obfuscated c contest — (programming)   The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC) is an annual contest run since 1984 over Usenet by Landon Curt Noll and friends. The overall winner is whoever produces the most unreadable, creative, and bizarre (but working) C program. Various other prizes are awarded at the judges' whim. C's terse syntax and macro-preprocessor facilities give contestants a lot of maneuvering room. The winning programs often manage to be simultaneously funny, breathtaking works of art and horrible examples of how *not* to code in C. This relatively short and sweet hello, world program demonstrates obfuscated C: /* HELLO WORLD program * by Jack Applin and Robert Heckendorn, 1985 */ main(v,c)char**c;{for(v[c++]="Hello, world!\n)"; (!!c)[*c]&&(v--||--c&&execlp(*c,*c,c[!!c]+!!c,!c)); **c=!c)write(!!*c,*c,!!**c);} Here's another good one: /* Program to compute an approximation of pi * by Brian Westley, 1988 */ #define _ -F<00||--F-OO--; int F=00,OO=00; main(){F_OO();printf("%1.3f\n",4.*-F/OO/OO);}F_OO() { _-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ _-_-_-_ } Note that this program works by computing its own area. For more digits, write a bigger program.
  • occupation franchise — the right of a tenant to vote in national and local elections
  • of (...) consequence — Something or someone of consequence is important or valuable. If something or someone is of no consequence, or of little consequence, they are not important or valuable.
  • on course/off course — If a ship or aircraft is on course, it is travelling along the correct route. If it is off course, it is no longer travelling along the correct route.
  • on the sunny side of — younger than (a specified age)
  • ousterhout's fallacy — Ousterhout's dichotomy
  • outside (of) the box — in a fresh, inventive, unconventional way
  • paper qualifications — qualifications gained through official examinations, etc, rather than through experience
  • pappus of alexandria — 3rd century bc, Greek mathematician, whose eight-volume Synagoge is a valuable source of information about Greek mathematics
  • particulars of claim — (in England) the first reading made by the claimant in a county court action, showing the facts upon which he or she relies in support of a claim and the relief asked for
  • peaceful coexistence — competition without war, or a policy of peace between nations of widely differing political systems and ideologies, especially between Communist and non-Communist nations: peaceful coexistence between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
  • permonosulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).
  • person of no account — (University of California at Santa Cruz) Used when referring to a person with no network address, frequently to forestall confusion. Most often as part of an introduction: "This is Bill, a person of no account, but he used to be [email protected]". Compare return from the dead.
  • prefecture apostolic — a territory in the early stage of missionary development.
  • put one's foot in it — (in vertebrates) the terminal part of the leg, below the ankle joint, on which the body stands and moves.
  • recursive definition — a definition consisting of a set of rules such that by repeated application of the rules the meaning of the definiendum is uniquely determined in terms of ideas that are already familiar.
  • red mercuric sulfide — a crystalline, water-insoluble, poisonous compound, HgS, occurring as a coarse, black powder (black mercuric sulfide) or as a fine, bright-scarlet powder (red mercuric sulfide) used chiefly as a pigment and as a source of the free metal.
  • refuse disposal unit — a unit or part of a sink that disposes of waste food, etc, by grinding
  • republic of maldives — a republic occupying an archipelago of 1087 coral islands in the Indian Ocean, southwest of Sri Lanka: came under British protection in 1887; became independent in 1965 and a republic in 1968; member of the Commonwealth (1982–2016). The economy and infrastructure were severely damaged in the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004. Official language: Divehi. Official religion: (Sunni) Muslim. Currency: rufiyaa. Capital: Malé. Pop: 393 988 (2013 est). Area: 298 sq km (115 sq miles)
  • request for comments — (standard)   (RFC) One of a series, begun in 1969, of numbered Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix communities. Few RFCs are standards but all Internet standards are recorded in RFCs. Perhaps the single most influential RFC has been RFC 822, the Internet electronic mail format standard. The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs even once adopted as standards. The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ANSI or ISO. Emblematic of some of these advantages is the existence of a flourishing tradition of "joke" RFCs; usually at least one a year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs have included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973), 748 ("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1 April 1978), and 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first was a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the TCP/IP documentation style, and the third a deadpan skewering of standards-document legalese, describing protocols for transmitting Internet data packets by carrier pigeon. The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work - they manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has grown to truly worldwide proportions. See also For Your Information, STD.
  • request for proposal — (programming)   (RFP) The publication by a prospective software purchaser of details of the required system in order to attract offers by software developers to supply it. Software development under contract starts with the selection of the software developer by the customer. A request for proposal (also called in Britain an "invitation to tender") is the beginning of the selection process.
  • sb's future lies swh — If you say that someone's future lies in a particular place or activity, you think they will be most successful or happy in that place or doing that activity.
  • serious fraud office — a UK government office responsible for investigating and prosecuting serious fraud cases
  • shifting cultivation — a land-use system, esp in tropical Africa, in which a tract of land is cultivated until its fertility diminishes, when it is abandoned until this is restored naturally
  • sing for your supper — If someone has to sing for their supper, they have to do a job before they are allowed to do something they want to do.
  • sodium fluoroacetate — a white, amorphous, water-soluble, poisonous powder, C 2 H 2 FO 2 Na, used as a rodenticide.
  • sodium metabisulfite — Sodium metabisulfite is a crystalline compound used as an antioxidant.
  • soft gelatin capsule — A soft gelatin capsule is a type of capsule that is usually used to contain medicine in the form of liquid or powder, and which dissolves more quickly than a hard gelatin capsule.
  • soke of peterborough — a former administrative unit of E central England, generally considered part of Northamptonshire or Huntingdonshire: absorbed into Cambridgeshire in 1974
  • specific conductance — conductivity (def 2).
  • specific-conductance — conductivity (def 2).
  • square of opposition — a diagrammatic representation of the opposition of categorical propositions.
  • squirrel's-foot fern — ball fern.
  • staff of aesculapius — a representation of a forked staff with an entwining serpent, used as a symbol of the medical profession and as the insignia of the American Medical Association and other medical organizations. Compare caduceus (def 2).
  • states of the church — Papal States
  • strong nuclear force — an interaction between elementary particles responsible for the forces between nucleons in the nucleus. It operates at distances less than about 10–15 metres, and is about a hundred times more powerful than the electromagnetic interaction
  • sufficient condition — a statement whose truth is sufficient to guarantee the truth of a given statement
  • surface-active agent — any substance that when dissolved in water or an aqueous solution reduces its surface tension or the interfacial tension between it and another liquid.
  • that makes two of us — the same applies to me
  • the course of nature — the ordinary course of events
  • the founding fathers — any of the men who were members of the U.S. Constituional Convention of 1787
  • the gnomes of zurich — Swiss bankers and financiers
  • the sum total of sth — all of something
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