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18-letter words containing o, a, s, t

  • engelbart, douglas — Douglas Engelbart
  • equinoctial spring — either of the two highest spring tides that occur at the equinoxes
  • eraser stains code — (humour, programming)   Code that has been refactored many times, leaving swaths of legacy code and design; like paper that has been written on and erased so many times that the pencil marks are no longer the problem - the large greasy stain is.
  • escape sb's notice — If something escapes your notice, you fail to recognize it or realize it.
  • ethnomusicological — Relating to or pertaining to ethnomusicology.
  • ethnopsychological — Relating to ethnopsychology.
  • euclid's algorithm — (algorithm)   (Or "Euclidean Algorithm") An algorithm for finding the greatest common divisor (GCD) of two numbers. It relies on the identity gcd(a, b) = gcd(a-b, b) To find the GCD of two numbers by this algorithm, repeatedly replace the larger by subtracting the smaller from it until the two numbers are equal. E.g. 132, 168 -> 132, 36 -> 96, 36 -> 60, 36 -> 24, 36 -> 24, 12 -> 12, 12 so the GCD of 132 and 168 is 12. This algorithm requires only subtraction and comparison operations but can take a number of steps proportional to the difference between the initial numbers (e.g. gcd(1, 1001) will take 1000 steps).
  • evapotranspiration — The process by which water is transferred from the land to the atmosphere by evaporation from the soil and other surfaces and by transpiration from plants.
  • evolution strategy — (ES) A kind of evolutionary algorithm where individuals (potential solutions) are encoded by a set of real-valued "object variables" (the individual's "genome"). For each object variable an individual also has a "strategy variable" which determines the degree of mutation to be applied to the corresponding object variable. The strategy variables also mutate, allowing the rate of mutation of the object variables to vary. An ES is characterised by the population size, the number of offspring produced in each generation and whether the new population is selected from parents and offspring or only from the offspring. ES were invented in 1963 by Ingo Rechenberg, Hans-Paul Schwefel at the Technical University of Berlin (TUB) while searching for the optimal shapes of bodies in a flow.
  • examination script — a script with answers written on it by an examination candidate taking a written examination
  • excess profits tax — a tax on profits exceeding a certain amount
  • extemporaneousness — The degree or property of being extemporaneous.
  • eyewitness account — a description given by someone who was present at an event
  • fall on one's feet — a plural of foot.
  • fall-back position — an alternative plan
  • fallot's tetralogy — a congenital heart disease in which there are four defects: pulmonary stenosis, enlarged right ventricle, a ventricular septal defect, and an aorta whose origin lies over the septal defect. In babies suffering this disease the defects can be corrected by surgery
  • false imprisonment — the unlawful restraint of a person from exercising the right to freedom of movement.
  • far eastern region — former name of Khabarovsk.
  • farewell-to-spring — a slender, showy plant, Clarkia amoena, of the evening primrose family, native to western North America, having satiny, cup-shaped, lilac-crimson or reddish-pink flowers and roundish fruit.
  • fast-food industry — the industry surrounding fast-food restaurants
  • feast of orthodoxy — a solemn festival held on the first Sunday of Lent (Orthodoxy Sunday) commemorating the restoration of the use of icons in the church (a.d. 842) and the triumph over all heresies.
  • feather one's nest — 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.
  • feldenkrais method — a system of gentle movements that promote flexibility, coordination, and self-awareness
  • fermat's last post — (humour)   A post to a bug tracker, mailing list or forum in which the author claims to have found a simple fix or workaround for a bug, but never says what it is and never shows up again to explain it (even after others have been puzzling over the bug for years).
  • fibrocartilaginous — a type of cartilage having a large number of fibers.
  • filename extension — (filename extension)   The portion of a filename, following the final point, which indicates the kind of data stored in the file - the file type. Many operating systems use filename extensions, e.g. Unix, VMS, MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows. They are usually from one to three letters (some sad old OSes support no more than three). Examples include "c" for C source code, "ps" for PostScript, "txt" for arbitrary text. Apart from informing the user what type of content the file holds, filename extensions are typically used to decide which program to launch when a file is "run", e.g. by double-clicking it in a GUI file browser. They are also used by Unix's make to determine how to build one kind of file from another. Compare: MIME type.
  • finite-dimensional — (of a vector space) having a basis consisting of a finite number of elements.
  • fire and brimstone — When people talk about fire and brimstone, they are referring to hell and how they think people are punished there after death.
  • fire-and-brimstone — threatening punishment in the hereafter: a fire-and-brimstone sermon.
  • first and foremost — primarily
  • first class module — (programming)   A module that is a first class data object of the programming language, e.g. a record containing functions. In a functional language, it is standard to have first class programs, so program building blocks can have the same status.
  • flame-of-the-woods — an Indian evergreen shrub, Ixora coccinea, of the madder family, having red, tubular flowers in dense clusters.
  • flat on one's back — lying supine
  • flotsam and jetsam — the part of the wreckage of a ship and its cargo found floating on the water. Compare jetsam, lagan.
  • football supporter — a person who supports a particular football team
  • foundling hospital — an institutional home for foundlings.
  • fracture toughness — The fracture toughness of a material is how likely it is to resist fracture.
  • from first to last — all the way through
  • ftp software, inc. — (company)   Developers of the original PC/TCP Packet Driver specification. Address: 26 Princess St. Wakefield, MA 01880-3004. Telephone: +1 (617) 246 0900.
  • functional disease — a disease in which there is an abnormal change in the function of an organ, but no structural alteration in the tissues involved (opposed to organic disease).
  • functional testing — (testing)   (Or "black-box testing", "closed-box testing") The application of test data derived from functional requirements without regard to how the system is implemented.
  • funding operations — the conversion of government floating stock or short-term debt into holdings of long-term bonds
  • galilean telescope — a refracting telescope that forms an erect image, consisting of an objective of relatively long focal length that causes light rays to converge and an eyepiece of short focal length that causes them to diverge.
  • gamma distribution — a continuous two-parameter distribution from which the chi-square and exponential distributions are derived, written Gamma (α. β), where α and β are greater than zero, and defined in terms of the gamma function
  • garden loosestrife — any of various plants belonging to the genus Lysimachia, of the primrose family, having clusters of usually yellow flowers, as L. vulgaris (garden loosestrife) or L. quadrifolia (whorled loosestrife)
  • gas chromatography — a chromatograph used for the separation of volatile substances.
  • gas-cooled reactor — a nuclear reactor using a gas as the coolant. In the Mark I type the coolant is carbon dioxide, the moderator is graphite, and the fuel is uranium cased in magnox
  • gastroduodenostomy — See under gastroenterostomy.
  • gastroenterologist — the study of the structure, functions, and diseases of digestive organs.
  • generating station — a power station
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