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20-letter words containing r, e, f, u, s

  • 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.
  • isochronous transfer — isochronous
  • joint life insurance — life insurance covering two or more persons, the benefits of which are paid after the first person dies.
  • law of large numbers — the theorem in probability theory that the number of successes increases as the number of experiments increases and approximates the probability times the number of experiments for a large number of experiments.
  • law of superposition — Geology. a basic law of geochronology, stating that in any undisturbed sequence of rocks deposited in layers, the youngest layer is on top and the oldest on bottom, each layer being younger than the one beneath it and older than the one above it.
  • life-support machine — A life-support machine is the equipment that is used to keep a person alive when they are very ill and cannot breathe without help.
  • like a house on fire — If two people get on like a house on fire, they quickly become close friends, for example because they have many interests in common.
  • liturgy of the hours — a revision (promulgated in 1970) of the arrangement and texts of the Divine Office
  • manufacturer's agent — an agent representing one or more manufacturers in selling related but noncompeting goods, usually on a commission basis and in a particular territory.
  • marquis de lafayette — Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier [ma-ree zhaw-zef pawl eev rawk zheel-ber dy maw-tyey] /maˈri ʒɔˈzɛf pɔl iv rɔk ʒilˈbɛr dü mɔˈtyeɪ/ (Show IPA), Marquis de. Also, La Fayette. 1757–1834, French soldier, statesman, and liberal leader, who served in the American Revolutionary Army as aide-de-camp to General Washington, and took a leading part in the French revolutions of 1789 and 1830.
  • mary, queen of scots — family name Stuart. 1542–87, queen of Scotland (1542–67); daughter of James V of Scotland and Mary of Guise. She was married to Francis II of France (1558–60), her cousin Lord Darnley (1565–67), and the Earl of Bothwell (1567–71), who was commonly regarded as Darnley's murderer. She was forced to abdicate in favour of her son (later James VI of Scotland) and fled to England. Imprisoned by Elizabeth I until 1587, she was beheaded for plotting against the English crown
  • mitral insufficiency — abnormal closure of the mitral valve resulting in regurgitation of blood into the atrium and leading to reduced heart function or heart failure.
  • most general unifier — (logic)   If U is the most general unifier of a set of expressions then any other unifier, V, can be expressed as V = UW, where W is another substitution. See also unification.
  • music of the spheres — a music, imperceptible to human ears, formerly supposed to be produced by the movements of the spheres or heavenly bodies.
  • new zealand fur seal — an Australasian seal, Arctocephalus forsteri
  • occupation franchise — the right of a tenant to vote in national and local elections
  • on course/off course — If a ship or aircraft is on course, it is travelling along the correct route. If it is off course, it is no longer travelling along the correct route.
  • ousterhout's fallacy — Ousterhout's dichotomy
  • paper qualifications — qualifications gained through official examinations, etc, rather than through experience
  • pappus of alexandria — 3rd century bc, Greek mathematician, whose eight-volume Synagoge is a valuable source of information about Greek mathematics
  • permonosulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).
  • person of no account — (University of California at Santa Cruz) Used when referring to a person with no network address, frequently to forestall confusion. Most often as part of an introduction: "This is Bill, a person of no account, but he used to be [email protected]". Compare return from the dead.
  • prefecture apostolic — a territory in the early stage of missionary development.
  • recursive definition — a definition consisting of a set of rules such that by repeated application of the rules the meaning of the definiendum is uniquely determined in terms of ideas that are already familiar.
  • red mercuric sulfide — a crystalline, water-insoluble, poisonous compound, HgS, occurring as a coarse, black powder (black mercuric sulfide) or as a fine, bright-scarlet powder (red mercuric sulfide) used chiefly as a pigment and as a source of the free metal.
  • refuse disposal unit — a unit or part of a sink that disposes of waste food, etc, by grinding
  • republic of maldives — a republic occupying an archipelago of 1087 coral islands in the Indian Ocean, southwest of Sri Lanka: came under British protection in 1887; became independent in 1965 and a republic in 1968; member of the Commonwealth (1982–2016). The economy and infrastructure were severely damaged in the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004. Official language: Divehi. Official religion: (Sunni) Muslim. Currency: rufiyaa. Capital: Malé. Pop: 393 988 (2013 est). Area: 298 sq km (115 sq miles)
  • request for comments — (standard)   (RFC) One of a series, begun in 1969, of numbered Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix communities. Few RFCs are standards but all Internet standards are recorded in RFCs. Perhaps the single most influential RFC has been RFC 822, the Internet electronic mail format standard. The RFCs are unusual in that they are floated by technical experts acting on their own initiative and reviewed by the Internet at large, rather than formally promulgated through an institution such as ANSI. For this reason, they remain known as RFCs even once adopted as standards. The RFC tradition of pragmatic, experience-driven, after-the-fact standard writing done by individuals or small working groups has important advantages over the more formal, committee-driven process typical of ANSI or ISO. Emblematic of some of these advantages is the existence of a flourishing tradition of "joke" RFCs; usually at least one a year is published, usually on April 1st. Well-known joke RFCs have included 527 ("ARPAWOCKY", R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973), 748 ("Telnet Randomly-Lose Option", Mark R. Crispin; 1 April 1978), and 1149 ("A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers", D. Waitzman, BBN STC; 1 April 1990). The first was a Lewis Carroll pastiche; the second a parody of the TCP/IP documentation style, and the third a deadpan skewering of standards-document legalese, describing protocols for transmitting Internet data packets by carrier pigeon. The RFCs are most remarkable for how well they work - they manage to have neither the ambiguities that are usually rife in informal specifications, nor the committee-perpetrated misfeatures that often haunt formal standards, and they define a network that has grown to truly worldwide proportions. See also For Your Information, STD.
  • request for proposal — (programming)   (RFP) The publication by a prospective software purchaser of details of the required system in order to attract offers by software developers to supply it. Software development under contract starts with the selection of the software developer by the customer. A request for proposal (also called in Britain an "invitation to tender") is the beginning of the selection process.
  • sb's future lies swh — If you say that someone's future lies in a particular place or activity, you think they will be most successful or happy in that place or doing that activity.
  • serious fraud office — a UK government office responsible for investigating and prosecuting serious fraud cases
  • sing for your supper — If someone has to sing for their supper, they have to do a job before they are allowed to do something they want to do.
  • sodium fluoroacetate — a white, amorphous, water-soluble, poisonous powder, C 2 H 2 FO 2 Na, used as a rodenticide.
  • soke of peterborough — a former administrative unit of E central England, generally considered part of Northamptonshire or Huntingdonshire: absorbed into Cambridgeshire in 1974
  • square of opposition — a diagrammatic representation of the opposition of categorical propositions.
  • squirrel's-foot fern — ball fern.
  • states of the church — Papal States
  • strong nuclear force — an interaction between elementary particles responsible for the forces between nucleons in the nucleus. It operates at distances less than about 10–15 metres, and is about a hundred times more powerful than the electromagnetic interaction
  • surface-active agent — any substance that when dissolved in water or an aqueous solution reduces its surface tension or the interfacial tension between it and another liquid.
  • the course of nature — the ordinary course of events
  • the founding fathers — any of the men who were members of the U.S. Constituional Convention of 1787
  • the gnomes of zurich — Swiss bankers and financiers
  • this time, for sure! — (exclamation)   Ritual affirmation frequently uttered during protracted debugging sessions involving numerous small obstacles (e.g. attempts to bring up a UUCP connection). For the proper effect, this must be uttered in a fruity imitation of Bullwinkle J. Moose. Also heard: "Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" The canonical response is, of course, "But that trick *never* works!" See hacker humour.
  • thomas of erceldoune — Thomas of, Thomas of Erceldoune.
  • thought transference — transference of thought by extrasensory means from the mind of one individual to another; telepathy.
  • to burst into flames — If something bursts into flames or bursts into flame, it suddenly starts burning strongly.
  • to flex your muscles — If a group, organization, or country flexes its muscles, it does something to impress or frighten people, in order to show them that it has power and is considering using it.
  • treasury certificate — an obligation of the U.S. government represented by certificates in denominations ranging from $1000 to $1,000,000, maturing in one year or less with interest periodically payable by the redemption of coupons.
  • trumpet call for sth — a signal for something
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