16-letter words containing r, e, c
- 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
- entrenching tool — a small, collapsible spade used by a soldier in the field for digging foxholes and the like.
- epigrammatically — In a manner suggesting of an epigram.
- episcopal church — an autonomous branch of the Anglican Communion in Scotland and the US
- error correction — the automatic correction of errors in data that arise from missing or distorted digital pulses
- error of closure — the amount by which a computed, plotted, or observed quantity or position differs from the true or established one, esp when plotting a closed traverse
- erythrocytometer — an instrument for counting the number or measuring the size of red blood cells in a sample of blood
- escalator clause — a clause in a contract stipulating an adjustment in wages, prices, etc, in the event of specified changes in conditions, such as a large rise in the cost of living or price of raw materials
- 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.
- exciting current — the current in a field winding.
- 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).
- executive member — a member of an executive committee
- executive relief — sexual intercourse or masturbation
- exotic shorthair — a short-haired variety of domestic cat with a stocky body, developed through crossing Persian cats with American shorthairs
- expectant mother — a pregnant woman
- experience table — an actuarial table, esp a mortality table based on past statistics
- extrachromosomal — Happening outside a chromosome.
- extracorporeally — Outside the body.
- 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.
- factor of safety — the ratio of the maximum stress that a structural part or other piece of material can withstand to the maximum stress estimated for it in the use for which it is designed.
- 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.
- fair-trade price — the price set for a commodity by the Fairtrade Foundation
- false beechdrops — either of two parasitic or saprophytic plants of the genus Monotropa, especially the tawny or reddish M. hypopithys (false beechdrops) of eastern North America.
- family of curves — a collection of curves whose equations differ only by values assigned a parameter or parameters.
- 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.
- farmer's reducer — a solution of ferricyanide and hypo for reducing density and increasing contrast in a negative.
- farmhouse cheese — cheese that is made by traditional methods, on or as if on a farm
- father christmas — Santa Claus.
- father confessor — confessor (def 2).
- feather merchant — a person who avoids responsibility and effort; loafer.
- feature creature — [Possibly from slang "creature feature" for a horror movie] 1. One who loves to add features to designs or programs, perhaps at the expense of coherence, concision or taste. 2. Alternately, a mythical being that induces otherwise rational programmers to perpetrate such crocks. See also feeping creaturism, creeping featurism.
- federal district — a district in which the national government of a country is located, especially one in Latin America.
- federated church — a church whose membership includes two or more congregations of different denominational affiliation.
- 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.
- feel-good factor — When journalists refer to the feel-good factor, they mean that people are feeling hopeful and optimistic about the future.
- 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.
- femme de chambre — a chambermaid
- 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.
- ferroelectricity — (physics) The electric polarization of a substance (spontaneous presence of a dipole moment) that is analagous to ferromagnetism.