15-letter words containing p, o, c, s
- double saucepan — a cooking utensil consisting of two saucepans, one fitting inside the other. The bottom saucepan contains water that, while boiling, gently heats food in the upper pan
- duplicitousness — The state or condition of being duplicitous.
- dynamic scoping — dynamic scope
- dysmorphophobic — relating to or affected with dysmorphophobia
- dystrophication — the process by which a body of water becomes dystrophic.
- east providence — a town in NE Rhode Island, near Providence.
- eclipse scotoma — a blind spot; a permanent or temporary area of depressed or absent vision caused by viewing the sun directly
- editio princeps — first edition.
- electrodeposits — Third-person singular simple present indicative form of electrodeposit.
- electron optics — the study and use of beams of electrons and of their deflection and focusing by electric and magnetic fields
- electrophoreses — Plural form of electrophoresis.
- electrophoresis — The movement of charged particles in a fluid or gel under the influence of an electric field.
- electropositive — Electrically positive.
- emancipationist — An advocate of the emancipation of slaves.
- episodic memory — the recollection of events within their historical setting
- epistemological — Of or pertaining to epistemology or theory of knowledge, as a field of study.
- eric conspiracy — (person, humour) A shadowy group of moustachioed hackers named Eric first pinpointed as a sinister conspiracy by an infamous talk.bizarre posting ca. 1986. This was doubtless influenced by the numerous "Eric" jokes in the Monty Python oeuvre. There do indeed seem to be considerably more moustachioed Erics in hackerdom than the frequency of these three traits can account for unless they are correlated in some arcane way. Well-known examples include Eric Allman (of the "Allman style" described under indent style), Erik Fair (co-author of NNTP), Eric S. Raymond and about fifteen others. The organisation line "Eric Conspiracy Secret Laboratories" now emanates regularly from more than one site.
- escape velocity — great enough speed to escape gravity
- esprit de corps — military, sport: team spirit
- ethnopsychology — The scientific study of psychological concepts as they exist across different ethnic groups.
- exceptionalness — The quality of being exceptional.
- existence proof — non-constructive proof
- expense account — account for expenses
- expressionistic — Expressionist.
- fahnestock clip — a type of terminal using a spring that clamps readily onto a connecting wire.
- fasciolopsiasis — a parasitic disease caused by flukes of the genus Fasciolopsis and characterized by abdominal pain and diarrhea: common in the Far East.
- fencepost error — 1. (Rarely "lamp-post error") A problem with the discrete equivalent of a boundary condition, often exhibited in programs by iterative loops. From the following problem: "If you build a fence 100 feet long with posts 10 feet apart, how many posts do you need?" (Either 9 or 11 is a better answer than the obvious 10). For example, suppose you have a long list or array of items, and want to process items m through n; how many items are there? The obvious answer is n - m, but that is off by one; the right answer is n - m + 1. The "obvious" formula exhibits a fencepost error. See also zeroth and note that not all off-by-one errors are fencepost errors. The game of Musical Chairs involves a catastrophic off-by-one error where N people try to sit in N - 1 chairs, but it's not a fencepost error. Fencepost errors come from counting things rather than the spaces between them, or vice versa, or by neglecting to consider whether one should count one or both ends of a row. 2. (Rare) An error induced by unexpected regularities in input values, which can (for instance) completely thwart a theoretically efficient binary tree or hash coding implementation. The error here involves the difference between expected and worst case behaviours of an algorithm.
- file descriptor — (programming, operating system) An integer that identifies an open file within a process. This number is obtained as a result of opening a file. Operations which read, write, or close a file would take the file descriptor as an input parameter. In many operating system implementations, file descriptors are small integers which index a table of open files. In Unix, file descriptors 0, 1 and 2 correspond to the standard input, standard output and standard error files respectively. See file descriptor leak.
- fission product — a nuclide produced either directly by nuclear fission or by the radioactive decay of such a nuclide
- food processing — transforming raw materials into food
- foolscap octavo — a book size, 41⁄4 by 63⁄4 inches
- foolscap quarto — a book size, 63⁄4 by 81⁄2 inches (foolscap quarto)
- forensic expert — an expert in applying scientific, technical or medical knowledge to the purposes of law
- fusospirochetal — Relating to fusospirochetes.
- fusospirochetes — Plural form of fusospirochete.
- gender politics — debate about the roles and relations of men and women
- geodemographics — the study and grouping of the people in a geographical area according to socioeconomic criteria, esp for market research
- geostrophically — By means of, or in terms of, geostrophy.
- gigantopithecus — a genus of extinct ape of southern Asia existing during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs, known only from very large fossil jaws and teeth and believed to be perhaps the biggest hominoid that ever lived.
- glossographical — relating to glossography
- gnome computers — (company) A small UK hardware and software company. They make transputer boards for the Acorn Archimedes among other things. E-mail: Chris Stenton <[email protected]>.
- gold prospector — a person who searches for the natural occurrence of gold
- group insurance — life, accident, or health insurance available to a group of persons, as the employees of a company, under a single contract, usually without regard to physical condition or age of the individuals.
- hausdorff space — a topological space in which each pair of points can be separated by two disjoint open sets containing the points.
- have one's pick — If you have your pick of a group of things, you are able to choose any of them that you want.
- histopathologic — the science dealing with the histological structure of abnormal or diseased tissue; pathological histology.
- historiographic — the body of literature dealing with historical matters; histories collectively.
- hopper casement — a casement with a sash hinged at the bottom.
- hospital corner — a fold on a bed sheet or blanket made by tucking the foot or head of the sheet straight under the mattress with the ends protruding and then making a diagonal fold at the side corner of the sheet and tucking this under to produce a triangular corner.
- hospital doctor — a hospital doctor works in a hospital, rather than as a general practitioner, in the army, etc