16-letter words containing n, a, c
- engineer's chain — a unit of length equal to 100 feet
- english canadian — a Canadian citizen whose first language is English, esp one of English descent
- enriched uranium — uranium in which the proportion of the fissile isotope U-235 has been increased to make it more fissile
- entente cordiale — a friendly understanding between political powers: less formal than an alliance
- enthusiastically — In an enthusiastic manner.
- epigallocatechin — Gallocatechol.
- equational logic — (logic) First-order equational logic consists of quantifier-free terms of ordinary first-order logic, with equality as the only predicate symbol. The model theory of this logic was developed into Universal algebra by Birkhoff et al. [Birkhoff, Gratzer, Cohn]. It was later made into a branch of category theory by Lawvere ("algebraic theories").
- escape mechanism — way of avoiding reality
- escutcheon plate — a plate or shield that surrounds a keyhole, door handle, light switch, etc, esp an ornamental one protecting a door or wall surface
- ethnic cleansing — genocide
- ethnocentrically — In an ethnocentric way.
- ethnographically — Regarding the ethnography (of a region).
- european council — an executive body of the European Union, made up of the President of the European Commission and representatives of the member states, including the foreign and other ministers. The Council acts at the request of the Commission
- evacuation route — An evacuation route is a way to get out of a building if there is an emergency, such as a fire.
- evangelistically — In an evangelistic manner.
- examine-in-chief — to examine (one's own witness) in attempting to adduce a case
- exceptionalities — Plural form of exceptionality.
- exchange student — sb who studies abroad
- exclamation mark — (character) The character "!" with ASCII code 33. Common names: bang; pling; excl (/eks'kl/); shriek; ITU-T: exclamation mark, exclamation point (US). Rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey; wham; eureka; soldier; INTERCAL: spark-spot. The Commonwealth Hackish, "pling", is common among Acorn Archimedes owners. Bang is more common in the USA. The occasional CMU usage, "shriek", is also used by APL fans and mathematicians, especially category theorists. Exclamation mark is used in C and elsewhere as the logical negation operation (NOT).
- exclusion clause — (in a contract) something that serves to limit liabilities
- exemplifications — Plural form of exemplification.
- exemption clause — a clause in a contract that exempts one party from liability for something
- exhibition match — a sports match which is not part of a competition but instead serves the function of demonstrating the skills of the players
- existentialistic — Existentialist.
- expectant mother — a pregnant woman
- experience table — an actuarial table, esp a mortality table based on past statistics
- extrinsic factor — vitamin B12
- face recognition — the ability of a computer to scan, store, and recognize human faces for use in identifying people
- facial neuralgia — paroxysmal darting pain and muscular twitching in the face, evoked by rubbing certain points of the face.
- faction fighting — dissension
- fahrenheit scale — Gabriel Daniel [German gah-bree-el dah-nee-el] /German ˈgɑ briˌɛl ˈdɑ niˌɛl/ (Show IPA), 1686–1736, German physicist: devised a temperature scale and introduced the use of mercury in thermometers.
- falling sickness — epilepsy.
- falsificationism — (epistemology) A scientific philosophy based on the requirement that hypotheses must be falsifiable in order to be scientific; if a claim is not able to be refuted it is not a scientific claim.
- family allowance — a regular government payment to the parents of children up to a certain age
- family balancing — the choosing of the sex of a future child on the basis of how many children of each sex a family already has
- family physician — a general practitioner.
- fancy dress ball — a ball at which the guests wear fancy dress
- fandango on core — (jargon, programming) (Unix/C, from the Mexican dance) In C, a wild pointer that runs out of bounds, causing a core dump, or corrupts the malloc arena in such a way as to cause mysterious failures later on, is sometimes said to have "done a fandango on core". On low-end personal machines without an MMU, this can corrupt the operating system itself, causing massive lossage. Other frenetic dances such as the rhumba, cha-cha, or watusi, may be substituted. See aliasing bug, precedence lossage, smash the stack, memory leak, memory smash, overrun screw, core.
- father confessor — confessor (def 2).
- feather merchant — a person who avoids responsibility and effort; loafer.
- feedback control — (electronics) A control system which monitors its effect on the system it is controlling and modifies its output accordingly. For example, a thermostat has two inputs: the desired temperature and the current temperature (the latter is the feedback). The output of the thermostat changes so as to try to equalise the two inputs. Computer disk drives use feedback control to position the read/write heads accurately on a recording track. Complex systems such as the human body contain many feedback systems that interact with each other; the homeostasis mechanisms that control body temperature and acidity are good examples.
- feel constrained — If you feel constrained to do something, you feel that you must do it, even though you would prefer not to.
- feeping creature — [feeping creaturism] An unnecessary feature; a bit of chrome that, in the speaker's judgment, is the camel's nose for a whole horde of new features.
- feminine caesura — a caesura occurring immediately after an unstressed or short syllable.
- ferdinand marcos — Ferdinand E(dralin) [ed-ruh-lin] /ˈɛd rə lɪn/ (Show IPA), 1917–1989, Philippine political leader: president 1965–86.
- ferricyanic acid — a brown, crystalline, unstable, water-soluble solid, H 3 Fe(CN) 6 , obtained by the interaction of a ferricyanide and an acid.
- ferrocyanic acid — a white, crystalline, unstable, water-soluble solid, H 4 Fe(CN) 6 , obtained by the interaction of a ferrocyanide and an acid.
- feulgen reaction — a reaction in which an aldehyde combines with a modified Schiff's reagent to produce a purplish compound: used especially to test for the presence of DNA
- fibonacci number — a number in the Fibonacci sequence, each of which is the sum of the previous two
- fibonacci series — a sequence of integers in which each integer (Fibonacci number) after the second is the sum of the two preceding integers; specif., the series 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, . . .