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20-letter words containing i, n, f, e, s

  • 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.
  • 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 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.
  • first point of aries — the vernal equinox.
  • 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.
  • five-elements school — Yin-Yang School.
  • five-star restaurant — a restaurant which has been given the top star-rating
  • flame-fusion process — Verneuil process.
  • fontainebleau school — a group of artists, many of them Italian and Flemish, who worked on the decorations of the palace of Fontainebleau in the 16th century.
  • for all one is worth — good or important enough to justify (what is specified): advice worth taking; a place worth visiting.
  • for sb's delectation — If you do something for someone's delectation, you do it to give them enjoyment or pleasure.
  • forbidden transition — an electronic transition in an atom, molecule, etc, that is not permitted by electric dipole selection rules
  • force-field analysis — a decision-making technique, often presented graphically, that identifies all the positive and negative forces impinging on a problem
  • fore-and-aft topsail — gaff topsail (def 1).
  • formative assessment — ongoing assessment of a pupil's educational development within a particular subject area
  • fridtjof nansen land — Franz Josef Land.
  • friend with benefits — (used as a euphemism) a friend with whom one has sex without a romantic relationship or commitment.
  • friends of the earth — an organization of environmentalists and conservationists whose aim is to promote the sustainable use of the earth's resources
  • frosting on the cake — a sweet mixture, cooked or uncooked, for coating or filling cakes, cookies, and the like; icing.
  • get one's finger out — to begin or speed up activity, esp after initial delay or slackness
  • gregory of nazianzus — Saint. ?329–89 ad, Cappadocian theologian: bishop of Caesarea (370–79). Feast days: Jan 2, 25, and 30
  • group life insurance — a form of life insurance available to members of a group, typically employees of a company, under a master policy.
  • heat of condensation — the heat liberated by a unit mass of gas at its boiling point as it condenses to a liquid: equal to the heat of vaporization.
  • house of assignation — a brothel.
  • houses of parliament — In Britain, the Houses of Parliament are the British parliament, which consists of two parts, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The buildings where the British parliament does its work are also called the Houses of Parliament.
  • hydrodesulfurization — desulfurization by catalytic agents of the sulfur-rich hydrocarbons obtained from petroleum or the like during cracking or hydrocracking.
  • ideal of pure reason — God, seen as an idea of pure reason unifying the personal soul with the cosmos.
  • in a class by itself — unique
  • in a state of nature — completely naked
  • in any shape or form — If you say, for example, that you will not accept something in any shape or form, or in any way, shape or form, you are emphasizing that you will not accept it in any circumstances.
  • in the nature of sth — If you say that one thing is in the nature of another, you mean that it is like the other thing.
  • infectious hepatitis — hepatitis A.
  • information builders — Distributors of LEVEL5 OBJECT. Telephone +1 800 969 INFO.
  • instruction prefetch — (architecture)   A technique which attempts to minimise the time a processor spends waiting for instructions to be fetched from memory. Instructions following the one currently being executed are loaded into a prefetch queue when the processor's external bus is otherwise idle. If the processor executes a branch instruction or receives an interrupt then the queue must be flushed and reloaded from the new address. Instruction prefetch is often combined with pipelining in an attempt to keep the pipeline busy. By 1995 most processors used prefetching, e.g. Motorola 680x0, Intel 80x86.
  • intestinal fortitude — courage; resoluteness; endurance; guts: to have intestinal fortitude.
  • investment portfolio — the whole range of financial investments held by an individual investor or a financial organization
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