13-letter words containing u, s, a
- faunistically — in a faunistic manner
- feature shock — (jargon) (From Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock") A user's confusion when confronted with a package that has too many features and poor introductory material.
- 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.
- fibromuscular — (anatomy) Of or pertaining to both fibrous and muscular tissue.
- fibrovascular — composed of fibrous and conductive tissue, as in the vascular systems of higher plants: a fibrovascular bundle.
- 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.
- flirtatiously — given or inclined to flirtation.
- fluophosphate — fluorophosphate.
- fluorocarbons — Plural form of fluorocarbon.
- fluoroplastic — any of the plastics, as Teflon, in which hydrogen atoms of the hydrocarbon chains are replaced by fluorine atoms.
- 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).
- formularising — Present participle of formularise.
- formularistic — relating to formularization
- fortunateness — The quality of being fortunate; fortune; luck.
- fountainheads — Plural form of fountainhead.
- four-way stop — an intersection of two roads with four stop signs, one facing in each direction
- fourth estate — the journalistic profession or its members; the press.
- fractiousness — refractory or unruly: a fractious animal that would not submit to the harness.
- fractocumulus — low ragged slightly bulbous cloud, often appearing below nimbostratus clouds during rain
- fractostratus — low ragged layered cloud often appearing below nimbostratus clouds during rain
- 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.
- frontal gyrus — any of several convolutions on the outer surface of the frontal lobe of the cerebrum.
- frumentaceous — of the nature of or resembling wheat or other grain.
- frumentarious — of or relating to wheat or a similar grain
- frustratingly — to make (plans, efforts, etc.) worthless or of no avail; defeat; nullify: The student's indifference frustrated the teacher's efforts to help him.
- 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.
- functionalism — (usually initial capital letter) Chiefly Architecture, Furniture. a design movement evolved from several previous movements or schools in Europe in the early 20th century, advocating the design of buildings, furnishings, etc., as direct fulfillments of material requirements, as for shelter, repose, or the serving of food, with the construction, materials, and purpose clearly expressed or at least not denied, and with aesthetic effect derived chiefly from proportions and finish, purely decorative effects being excluded or greatly subordinated. the doctrines and practices associated with this movement. Compare rationalism (def 4).
- functionalist — a person who advocates, or works according to, the principles of functionalism.
- functionaries — Plural form of functionary.
- furaciousness — the quality of being furacious or thievish
- fusarium wilt — a disease of plants, characterized by damping-off, wilting, and a brown dry rot, caused by fungi of the genus Fusarium.
- 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.
- futilitarians — Plural form of futilitarian.
- galactagogues — Plural form of galactagogue.