0%

20-letter words containing s, a, f, e

  • conservation of mass — the principle that the total mass of any isolated system is constant and is independent of any chemical and physical changes taking place within the system
  • context of situation — the totality of extralinguistic features having relevance to a communicative act.
  • court of last resort — (in the US) a supreme court
  • court of st. james's — the British royal court: so called from St. James's Palace, London, the former scene of royal receptions.
  • craft apprenticeship — a period of training for a skilled trade in industry, such as for a plumber or electrician
  • cream of tomato soup — a creamy soup made from tomatoes
  • darkfield microscope — kind of microscope
  • de facto segregation — racial, ethnic, or other segregation resulting from societal differences between groups, as socioeconomic or political disparity, without institutionalized legislation intended to segregate.
  • defense data network — (DDN) A global communications network serving the US Department of Defense. Composed of MILNET, other portions of the Internet, and classified networks which are not part of the Internet. The DDN is used to connect military installations and is managed by the Defense Information Systems Agency.
  • differential housing — the casing that houses the differential of a motor vehicle
  • discounted cash flow — a technique for appraising an investment that takes into account the different values of future returns according to when they will be received
  • due process (of law) — the course of legal proceedings established by the legal system of a nation or state to protect individual rights
  • eat out of sb's hand — If you have someone eating out of your hand, they are completely under your control.
  • edward the confessor — Saint, 1002?–66, English king 1042–66: founder of Westminster Abbey.
  • effective resistance — the resistance to an alternating current, expressed as the ratio of the power dissipated to the square of the effective current.
  • entry qualifications — the qualifications people wishing to enter an organization, university, etc, have to have
  • erythema infectiosum — a mild infectious disease of childhood, caused by a virus, characterized by fever and a red rash spreading from the cheeks to the limbs and trunk
  • essential fatty acid — any fatty acid required by the body in manufacturing prostaglandins, found in such foods as oily fish and nuts
  • european social fund — one of the four Structural Funds of the European Union which aims to support employment and the economic and social well-being of EU member countries
  • exercise, left as an — Used to complete a proof in technical books when one doesn't mind a handwave, or to avoid one entirely. The complete phrase is: "The proof [or "the rest"] is left as an exercise for the reader." This comment *has* occasionally been attached to unsolved research problems by authors possessed of either an evil sense of humour or a vast faith in the capabilities of their audiences.
  • faculty of advocates — the college or society of advocates in Scotland
  • false solomon's-seal — any of several plants belonging to the genus Smilacina, of the lily family, having long, arching clusters of greenish-white flowers.
  • fast-breeder reactor — a breeder reactor in which there is no moderator and fission is caused by high-energy neutrons.
  • feast of tabernacles — Sukkoth.
  • feather in one's cap — 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.
  • federal constitution — Constitution of the United States.
  • federal reserve bank — a U.S. federal banking system that is under the control of a central board of governors (Federal Reserve Board) with a central bank (Federal Reserve Bank) in each of 12 districts and that has wide powers in controlling credit and the flow of money as well as in performing other functions, as regulating and supervising its member banks.
  • federal reserve note — a form of paper money issued by a Federal Reserve Bank.
  • file descriptor leak — (programming)   (Or "fd leak" /F D leek/) A kind of programming bug analogous to a core leak, in which a program fails to close file descriptors ("fd"s) after file operations are completed, and thus eventually runs out of them. See leak.
  • financial instrument — A financial instrument is a document or contract that can be traded in a market, that represents an asset to one party and a liability or equity to the other.
  • financial statements — Financial statements are all of the reports that show how a company is performing for a certain period.
  • finite state grammar — a simplified form of transformational grammar devised by Noam Chomsky
  • finite state machine — (mathematics, algorithm, theory)   (FSM or "Finite State Automaton", "transducer") An abstract machine consisting of a set of states (including the initial state), a set of input events, a set of output events, and a state transition function. The function takes the current state and an input event and returns the new set of output events and the next state. Some states may be designated as "terminal states". The state machine can also be viewed as a function which maps an ordered sequence of input events into a corresponding sequence of (sets of) output events. A deterministic FSM (DFA) is one where the next state is uniquely determinied by a single input event. The next state of a nondeterministic FSM (NFA) depends not only on the current input event, but also on an arbitrary number of subsequent input events. Until these subsequent events occur it is not possible to determine which state the machine is in. It is possible to automatically translate any nondeterministic FSM into a deterministic one which will produce the same output given the same input. Each state in the DFA represents the set of states the NFA might be in at a given time. In a probabilistic FSM [proper name?], there is a predetermined probability of each next state given the current state and input (compare Markov chain). The terms "acceptor" and "transducer" are used particularly in language theory where automata are often considered as abstract machines capable of recognising a language (certain sequences of input events). An acceptor has a single Boolean output and accepts or rejects the input sequence by outputting true or false respectively, whereas a transducer translates the input into a sequence of output events. FSMs are used in computability theory and in some practical applications such as regular expressions and digital logic design. See also state transition diagram, Turing Machine.
  • firearms certificate — a certificate that entitles the holder to own and keep a firearm
  • first earl of cromer — 1st Earl of, Evelyn Baring.
  • first point of aries — the vernal equinox.
  • first-cause argument — an argument for the existence of God, asserting the necessity of an uncaused cause of all subsequent series of causes, on the assumption that an infinite regress is impossible.
  • five-a-side football — a version of soccer with five players in each team
  • five-star restaurant — a restaurant which has been given the top star-rating
  • flame-fusion process — Verneuil process.
  • fold-and-thrust belt — a linear or arcuate region of the earth's surface that has been subjected to severe folding and thrust faulting
  • fontainebleau school — a group of artists, many of them Italian and Flemish, who worked on the decorations of the palace of Fontainebleau in the 16th century.
  • for all one is worth — good or important enough to justify (what is specified): advice worth taking; a place worth visiting.
  • for sb's delectation — If you do something for someone's delectation, you do it to give them enjoyment or pleasure.
  • for the sake of sthg — If you do something for the sake of something, you do it for that purpose or in order to achieve that result. You can also say that you do it for something's sake.
  • forbidden transition — an electronic transition in an atom, molecule, etc, that is not permitted by electric dipole selection rules
  • force someone's hand — to force someone to act
  • force-field analysis — a decision-making technique, often presented graphically, that identifies all the positive and negative forces impinging on a problem
  • fore-and-aft topsail — gaff topsail (def 1).
  • fore-topgallant mast — the spar or section of a spar forming the topgallant portion of a foremast on a ship.
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?