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19-letter words containing s, u, n, f, a

  • future date testing — (testing)   The process of setting a computer's date to a future date to test a program's (expected or unexpected) date sensitivity. Future date testing only shows the effects of dates on the computer(s) under scrutiny, it does not take into account knock-on effects of dates on other connected systems.
  • go out of one's way — manner, mode, or fashion: a new way of looking at a matter; to reply in a polite way.
  • greenstick fracture — an incomplete fracture of a long bone, in which one side is broken and the other side is still intact.
  • heat of sublimation — the heat absorbed by one gram or unit mass of a substance in the process of changing, at a constant temperature and pressure, from a solid to a gaseous state. Compare sublime (def 10).
  • idea of pure reason — any of the three undemonstrable entities (a personal soul, a cosmos, and a supreme being) implicit in the fact of a subject and an object of knowledge, and in the need for some principle uniting them.
  • indian paint fungus — a common woody hoof-shaped fungus, Echinodontium tinctorium, found on conifers in western North America and believed to have been used as a dye by Pacific Northwest Indians.
  • isthmus of san blas — the narrowest part of the Isthmus of Panama. Width: about 50 km (30 miles)
  • jacques montgolfier — Jacques Étienne [zhahk ey-tyen] /ʒɑk eɪˈtyɛn/ (Show IPA), 1745–99, and his brother Joseph Michel [zhaw-zef mee-shel] /ʒɔˈzɛf miˈʃɛl/ (Show IPA) 1740–1810, French aeronauts: inventors of the first practical balloon 1783.
  • juan de fuca strait — strait between Vancouver Island and NW Wash.: c. 100 mi (161 km) long
  • 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.
  • master of foxhounds — the person responsible for the conduct of a fox hunt and to whom all members of the hunt and its staff are responsible. Abbreviation: M.F.H.
  • means of production — resources: equipment, workers
  • mid-autumn festival — a Chinese festival that is held to celebrate the end of the summer harvest, when the crops have been gathered.
  • missing fundamental — a tone, not present in the sound received by the ear, whose pitch is that of the difference between the two tones that are sounded
  • mother-of-thousands — strawberry geranium.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • parainfluenza virus — any of a group of viruses that cause respiratory infections with influenza-like symptoms, esp in children
  • performance figures — the statistics that indicate how well or badly a company or organization has performed
  • persian gulf states — group of Arab sheikdoms along the Persian Gulf: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, & United Arab Emirates
  • 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.
  • presumption of fact — a presumption based on experience or knowledge of the relationship between a known fact and a fact inferred from it.
  • pseudo-professional — following an occupation as a means of livelihood or for gain: a professional builder.
  • 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)
  • put a figure on sth — When you put a figure on an amount, you say exactly how much it is.
  • queen street farmer — a businessman who runs a farm, often for a tax loss
  • queensland lungfish — a lungfish, Neoceratodus forsteri, reaching a length of six feet: occurs in Queensland rivers but introduced elsewhere
  • saccharofarinaceous — pertaining to or consisting of sugar and meal.
  • sea of tranquillity — Astronomy. Mare Tranquillitatis.
  • 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.
  • sentential function — an expression that contains one or more variables and becomes meaningful when suitable constant terms are substituted for them.
  • significant figures — the figures of a number that express a magnitude to a specified degree of accuracy, rounding up or down the final figure
  • single life annuity — A single life annuity is an annuity where only one life is covered.
  • 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 african dutch — the Boers.
  • south pacific ocean — the part of the Pacific Ocean extending S from the Equator to the Antarctic continent.
  • south san francisco — a city in central California.
  • 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
  • staff-student ratio — the ratio of teachers to pupils or students in a school, college, or university
  • stanford university — (education)   A University in the city of Palo Alto, California, noted for work in computing, especially artificial intelligence. See SAIL.
  • step-up transformer — a device that transfers an alternating current from one circuit to one or more other circuits with an increase of voltage
  • stratford-upon-avon — town in S Warwickshire, England, on the Avon: birthplace & burial place of Shakespeare: pop. of county district (called Stratford-on-Avon) 106,000
  • subsistence farming — farming whose products are intended to provide for the basic needs of the farmer, with little surplus for marketing.
  • sugar loaf mountain — a mountain in SE Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, at the entrance to Guanabara Bay. 1280 feet (390 meters).
  • superannuation fund — a fund used for paying pensions
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