19-letter words containing s, u, c, e, f
- languages of choice — C and Lisp. Nearly every hacker knows one of these, and most good ones are fluent in both. Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential communities. There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers with Fortran, or even assembler, as their language of choice. They often prefer to be known as Real Programmers, and other hackers consider them a bit odd (see "The Story of Mel"). Assembler is generally no longer considered interesting or appropriate for anything but HLL implementation, glue, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems programs. Fortran occupies a shrinking niche in scientific programming. Most hackers tend to frown on languages like Pascal and Ada, which don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for hacking (see bondage-and-discipline language), and to regard everything even remotely connected with COBOL or other traditional card walloper languages as a total and unmitigated loss.
- lift up one's voice — to speak out loudly
- luminous efficiency — the perceived brightness of light as a ratio of the total luminous flux to total radiant flux of the source; a measure of brightness obtained by dividing the source's luminous flux by the consumption of its energy.
- malicious falsehood — a lie told by someone who knows the lie is false or knows it will do harm to the person it is concerning
- means of production — resources: equipment, workers
- membership function — fuzzy subset
- neats vs. scruffies — (artificial intelligence, jargon) The label used to refer to one of the continuing holy wars in artificial intelligence research. This conflict tangles together two separate issues. One is the relationship between human reasoning and AI; "neats" tend to try to build systems that "reason" in some way identifiably similar to the way humans report themselves as doing, while "scruffies" profess not to care whether an algorithm resembles human reasoning in the least as long as it works. More importantly, neats tend to believe that logic is king, while scruffies favour looser, more ad-hoc methods driven by empirical knowledge. To a neat, scruffy methods appear promiscuous, successful only by accident and not productive of insights about how intelligence actually works; to a scruffy, neat methods appear to be hung up on formalism and irrelevant to the hard-to-capture "common sense" of living intelligences.
- neufchâtel (cheese) — a soft white cheese prepared from whole milk or skim milk and eaten fresh or cured
- objectfuscated code — (humour, programming) Object-oriented code which has been abstracted to so many levels that no-one can understand it anymore. A play on obfuscated code.
- on (or off) course — moving (or not moving) in the intended direction
- on cue/as if on cue — If you say that something happened on cue or as if on cue, you mean that it happened just when it was expected to happen, or just at the right time.
- performance figures — the statistics that indicate how well or badly a company or organization has performed
- peroxysulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).
- phacoemulsification — the removal of a cataract by first liquefying the affected lens with ultrasonic vibrations and then extracting it by suction.
- phakoemulsification — the removal of a cataract by first liquefying the affected lens with ultrasonic vibrations and then extracting it by suction.
- pillars of hercules — the two promontories at the E end of the Strait of Gibraltar: the Rock of Gibraltar on the European side and the Jebel Musa on the African side; according to legend, formed by Hercules
- presumption of fact — a presumption based on experience or knowledge of the relationship between a known fact and a fact inferred from it.
- pugwash conferences — international peace conferences of scientists held regularly to discuss world problems: Nobel peace prize 1995 awarded to Joseph Rotblat (1908–2005) , one of the founders of the conferences, secretary-general (1957–73), and president (1988–97)
- radius of curvature — the absolute value of the reciprocal of the curvature at a point on a curve.
- republic of letters — the collective body of literary people.
- ruffini's corpuscle — an end organ of certain sensory neurons that branches out parallel to the skin and responds to steady pressure.
- saccharofarinaceous — pertaining to or consisting of sugar and meal.
- school of the squad — an institution where instruction is given, especially to persons under college age: The children are at school.
- scratch the surface — examine superficially
- self-congratulating — the expression or feeling of uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one's own accomplishment, good fortune, etc.; complacency.
- self-congratulation — the expression or feeling of uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one's own accomplishment, good fortune, etc.; complacency.
- self-congratulatory — the expression or feeling of uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one's own accomplishment, good fortune, etc.; complacency.
- self-reconstruction — an act of reconstructing.
- sentential function — an expression that contains one or more variables and becomes meaningful when suitable constant terms are substituted for them.
- sharp-focus realism — photorealism.
- significant figures — the figures of a number that express a magnitude to a specified degree of accuracy, rounding up or down the final figure
- sound effects woman — a woman who produces sounds artificially or reproduces them from a recording, etc, to create a theatrical effect, such as the bringing together of two halves of a hollow coconut shell to simulate a horse's gallop. Such sound effects are used in plays, films, etc
- south pacific ocean — the part of the Pacific Ocean extending S from the Equator to the Antarctic continent.
- specular reflection — Specular reflection is reflection of heat or light in which the angles of different parts of the surface are important.
- speculative fiction — a broad literary genre encompassing any fiction with supernatural, fantastical, or futuristic elements
- sphere of influence — any area in which one nation wields dominant power over another or others.
- subsistence farming — farming whose products are intended to provide for the basic needs of the farmer, with little surplus for marketing.
- succession of crops — the continuous cultivation of a crop throughout a season by successive plantings or by the use of varieties with different rates of growth.
- supercritical fluid — A supercritical fluid is a fluid at a temperature and pressure at which there is no difference between liquid and gas.
- superhigh frequency — any frequency between 3000 and 30,000 megahertz. Abbreviation: SHF.
- surface effect ship — a large, ship-size air cushion vehicle operated over water.
- take one's cue from — If you take your cue from someone or something, you do something similar in a particular situation.
- term life insurance — life insurance for which premiums are paid over a limited time and that covers a specific term, the face value payable only if death occurs within that term.
- the finishing touch — If you add the finishing touches to something, you add or do the last things that are necessary to complete it.
- the four corners of — You can use expressions such as the four corners of the world to refer to places that are a long way from each other.
- to make a fast buck — When someone makes a fast buck or makes a quick buck, they earn a lot of money quickly and easily, often by doing something which is considered to be dishonest.
- to the exclusion of — If you do one thing to the exclusion of something else, you only do the first thing and do not do the second thing at all.
- traffic regulations — rules designed to expedite the flow of traffic and prevent collisions
- transference number — that fraction of the total electric current that anions and cations carry in passing through an electrolytic solution.
- unclassified degree — a degree that has not been given a grade because it is of a low standard