15-letter words containing s, p, e, n, t
- expansion joint — structural feature: gap to allow for expansion or contraction
- expeditiousness — The state of being expeditious; celerity, rapidity or speed.
- expense account — account for expenses
- experientialism — (philosophy) The theory that experience is the source of knowledge.
- experientialist — A proponent of experientialism.
- experimentalism — An experimental practice or tendency, especially in the arts.
- experimentalist — One who performs experiments.
- export earnings — the earnings of a company or country that are generated through the export of goods or services
- expression tree — (mathematics, grammar) The syntax tree of an expression.
- expressionistic — Expressionist.
- extemporisation — Alternative spelling of extemporization.
- extended pascal — A superset of ANSI and ISO Pascal with many enhancements, including modules, separate compilation, type schemata, variable-length strings, direct-access files, complex numbers, initial values, constant expressions. ANSI/IEEE770X3.160-1989 and ISO 10206.
- external spline — any one of a series of narrow keys formed longitudinally around the circumference of a shaft that fit into corresponding grooves (internal splines) in a mating part: used to prevent movement between two parts, esp in transmitting torque
- fahnestock clip — a type of terminal using a spring that clamps readily onto a connecting wire.
- fallopian tubes — one of a pair of long, slender ducts in the female abdomen that transport ova from the ovary to the uterus and, in fertilization, transport sperm cells from the uterus to the released ova; the oviduct of higher mammals.
- false pretences — fraud, deception
- false pretenses — If you do something under false pretenses, you do it when people do not know the truth about you and your intentions.
- 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.
- fillister plane — an adjustable plane for cutting rabbets, grooves, etc
- first principle — any axiom, law, or abstraction assumed and regarded as representing the highest possible degree of generalization.
- first responder — a person who is certified to provide medical care in emergencies before more highly trained medical personnel arrive on the scene: a firefighter trained as a first responder.
- food supplement — a substance designed to make up for a deficiency in one's diet
- for the present — being, existing, or occurring at this time or now; current: increasing respect for the present ruler of the small country.
- for their pains — You say that something was all you got for your pains when you are mentioning the disappointing result of situation into which you put a lot of work or effort.
- forensic expert — an expert in applying scientific, technical or medical knowledge to the purposes of law
- fourteen points — a statement of the war aims of the Allies, made by President Wilson on January 8, 1918.
- fourteen-points — a statement of the war aims of the Allies, made by President Wilson on January 8, 1918.
- fragrance strip — a folded, usually sealed strip on a page or card, impregnated with fragrance that is released when pulled or torn open: The magazine is full of fragrance strips in the advertisements.
- free enterprise — an economic and political doctrine holding that a capitalist economy can regulate itself in a freely competitive market through the relationship of supply and demand with a minimum of governmental intervention and regulation.
- front-page news — a story printed on the first page of a newspaper
- gender politics — debate about the roles and relations of men and women
- geomorphogenist — one who studies, or is an expert in, geomorphogeny
- get one's lumps — a piece or mass of solid matter without regular shape or of no particular shape: a lump of coal.
- 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.
- glazier's point — a small, pointed piece of sheet metal, for holding a pane of glass in a sash until the putty has hardened.
- 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]>.
- golden pheasant — an Asiatic pheasant, Chrysolophus pictus, having brilliant scarlet, orange, gold, green, and black plumage.
- grafenberg spot — a patch of tissue in the front wall of the vagina, claimed to be erectile and highly erogenous.
- hautes-pyrenees — a department in SW France. 1751 sq. mi. (4535 sq. km). Capital: Tarbes.
- help oneself to — to serve or provide oneself with (food, etc.)
- hip measurement — a measurement around the hips at the level of the buttocks used in clothing and assessing general health
- hopeful monster — a hypothetical individual organism that, by means of a fortuitous macromutation permitting an adaptive shift to a new mode of life, becomes the founder of a new type of organism and a vehicle of macroevolution.
- 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.
- housing project — a publicly built and operated housing development, usually intended for low- or moderate-income tenants, senior citizens, etc.
- hunt the wumpus — (games, history) (Or "Wumpus") /wuhm'p*s/ A famous fantasy computer game, created by Gregory Yob in about 1973. Hunt the Wumpus appeared in Creative Computing, Vol 1, No 5, Sep - Oct 1975, where Yob says he had come up with the game two years previously, after seeing the grid-based games Hurkle, Snark and Mugwump at People's Computing Company (PCC). He later delivered Wumpus to PCC who published it in their newsletter. ESR says he saw a version including termites running on the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System in 1972-3. Magnus Olsson, in his 1992-07-07 USENET article <[email protected]>, posted the BASIC source code of what he believed was pretty much the version that was published in 1973 in David Ahl's "101 Basic Computer Games", by Digital Equipment Corporation. The wumpus lived somewhere in a cave with the topology of an dodecahedron's edge/vertex graph (later versions supported other topologies, including an icosahedron and M"obius strip). The player started somewhere at random in the cave with five "crooked arrows"; these could be shot through up to three connected rooms, and would kill the wumpus on a hit (later versions introduced the wounded wumpus, which got very angry). Unfortunately for players, the movement necessary to map the maze was made hazardous not merely by the wumpus (which would eat you if you stepped on him) but also by bottomless pits and colonies of super bats that would pick you up and drop you at a random location (later versions added "anaerobic termites" that ate arrows, bat migrations and earthquakes that randomly changed pit locations). This game appears to have been the first to use a non-random graph-structured map (as opposed to a rectangular grid like the even older Star Trek games). In this respect, as in the dungeon-like setting and its terse, amusing messages, it prefigured ADVENT and Zork and was directly ancestral to both (Zork acknowledged this heritage by including a super-bat colony). There have been many ports including one distributed with SunOS, a freeware one for the Macintosh and a C emulation by ESR.
- hyperactiveness — The state or quality of being hyperactive.
- hyperextensible — Capable of being stretched and extended.
- hypersalivation — the act or process of salivating.
- hypersensitized — Simple past tense and past participle of hypersensitize.