13-letter words containing s, e, a, u
- feature story — a newspaper or magazine article or report of a person, event, an aspect of a major event, or the like, often having a personal slant and written in an individual style. Compare follow-up (def 3b), hard news, news story.
- featurelessly — In a featureless way; without features.
- feudal system — the political, military, and social system in the Middle Ages, based on the holding of lands in fief or fee and on the resulting relations between lord and vassal.
- fidus achates — a faithful friend or companion
- figured glass — plate or sheet glass having a pattern rolled onto one side of the surface.
- fine adjuster — (jargon, tool, humour) A tool used for percussive maintenance, also known as a "hammer".
- finite clause — a clause with a finite verb in its predicate.
- first quarter — the instant, approximately one week after a new moon, when one half of the moon's disk is illuminated by the sun.
- first refusal — If someone has first refusal on something that is being sold or offered, they have the right to decide whether or not to buy it or take it before it is offered to anyone else.
- fish geranium — zonal geranium.
- flash picture — a photograph made using flash photography.
- fluophosphate — fluorophosphate.
- flutterboards — Plural form of flutterboard.
- flying saucer — any of various disk-shaped objects allegedly seen flying at high speeds and altitudes, often with extreme changes in speed and direction, and thought by some to be manned by intelligent beings from outer space.
- focal seizure — an epileptic manifestation arising from a localized anomaly in the brain, as a small tumor or scar, and usually involving a single motor or sensory mechanism but occasionally spreading to other areas and causing convulsions and loss of consciousness.
- for values of — (jargon) A common rhetorical maneuver at MIT is to use any of the canonical random numbers as placeholders for variables. "The max function takes 42 arguments, for arbitrary values of 42". "There are 69 ways to leave your lover, for 69 = 50". This is especially likely when the speaker has uttered a random number and realises that it was not recognised as such, but even "non-random" numbers are occasionally used in this fashion. A related joke is that pi equals 3 - for small values of pi and large values of 3. This usage probably derives from the programming language MAD (Michigan Algorithm Decoder), an ALGOL-like language that was the most common choice among mainstream (non-hacker) users at MIT in the mid-1960s. It had a control structure FOR VALUES OF X = 3, 7, 99 DO ... that would repeat the indicated instructions for each value in the list (unlike the usual FOR that generates an arithmetic sequence of values). MAD is long extinct, but similar for-constructs still flourish (e.g. in Unix's shell languages).
- fortunateness — The quality of being fortunate; fortune; luck.
- fountainheads — Plural form of fountainhead.
- fourth estate — the journalistic profession or its members; the press.
- fractiousness — refractory or unruly: a fractious animal that would not submit to the harness.
- freudian slip — (in Freudian psychology) an inadvertent mistake in speech or writing that is thought to reveal a person's unconscious motives, wishes, or attitudes.
- frumentaceous — of the nature of or resembling wheat or other grain.
- frumentarious — of or relating to wheat or a similar grain
- fugaciousness — (obsolete) fugacity.
- full laziness — (functional programming) A transformation, described by Wadsworth in 1971, which ensures that subexpressions in a function body which do not depend on the function's arguments are only evaluated once. E.g. each time the function f x = x + sqrt 4 is applied, (sqrt 4) will be evaluated. Since (sqrt 4) does not depend on x, we could transform this to: f x = x + sqrt4 sqrt4 = sqrt 4 We have replaced the dynamically created (sqrt 4) with a single shared constant which, in a graph reduction system, will be evaluated the first time it is needed and then updated with its value. See also fully lazy lambda lifting, let floating.
- full of beans — the edible nutritious seed of various plants of the legume family, especially of the genus Phaseolus.
- fun and games — frivolously diverting activity.
- functionalise — to make functional.
- functionaries — Plural form of functionary.
- furaciousness — the quality of being furacious or thievish
- fusible metal — any of various alloys, as of bismuth, lead, and tin, that melt at temperatures as low as 160°F (70°C), making them useful in various safety devices.
- galactagogues — Plural form of galactagogue.
- galerie house — (in French Louisiana) a house with its main story above the ground floor and with verandas (galeries) for both stories in tiers on at least one side.
- gallimaufries — Plural form of gallimaufry.
- gametothallus — a gamete-producing thallus.
- gamgee tissue — a type of dressing for wounds
- gap insurance — GAP insurance pays the difference between what someone owes on their car loan and the actual cash value of the vehicle in the event that it is stolen or damaged.
- garden suburb — a suburb of a large established town or city, planned along the lines of a garden city
- garnetiferous — containing or yielding garnets.
- garrulousness — Garrulity.
- gastric juice — the digestive fluid, containing pepsin and other enzymes, secreted by the glands of the stomach.
- gastric ulcer — a peptic ulcer located in the stomach's inner wall, caused in part by the corrosive action of the gastric juice on the mucous membrane.
- gastrocnemius — the largest muscle in the calf of the leg, the action of which extends the foot, raises the heel, and assists in bending the knee.
- geitonogamous — of or relating to geitonogamy
- gelandesprung — a jump, usually over an obstacle, in which one plants both poles in the snow in advance of the skis, bends close to the ground, and propels oneself chiefly by the use of the poles.
- gentianaceous — belonging to the plant family Gentianaceae.
- gesticulating — Present participle of gesticulate.
- gesticulation — the act of gesticulating.
- gesticulative — to make or use gestures, especially in an animated or excited manner with or instead of speech.
- gesticulatory — Making a lot of gesticulations.