0%

13-letter words containing l, a, f, e, s

  • field sparrow — a common North American finch, Spizella pusilla, found in brushy pasturelands.
  • field-glasses — Field-glasses are the same as binoculars.
  • figured glass — plate or sheet glass having a pattern rolled onto one side of the surface.
  • file transfer — (networking)   Copying a file from one computer to another over a computer network. See also File Transfer Protocol, Kermit, Network File System, rcp, uucp, XMODEM, ZMODEM.
  • film festival — a festival devoted to film
  • filmographies — Plural form of filmography.
  • finagle's law — (humour)   The generalised or "folk" version of Murphy's Law, fully named "Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives" and usually rendered "Anything that can go wrong, will". One variant favoured among hackers is "The perversity of the Universe tends toward a maximum". The label "Finagle's Law" was popularised by SF author Larry Niven in several stories depicting a frontier culture of asteroid miners; this "Belter" culture professed a religion and/or running joke involving the worship of the dread god Finagle and his mad prophet Murphy.
  • final whistle — sport: whistle indicating end of match
  • fingal's cave — a cave on the island of Staffa, in the Hebrides, Scotland. 227 feet (69 meters) long; 42 feet (13 meters) wide.
  • finite clause — a clause with a finite verb in its predicate.
  • 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.
  • flabbergasted — to overcome with surprise and bewilderment; astound.
  • flabbergaster — to overcome with surprise and bewilderment; astound.
  • flabergasting — Present participle of flabergast.
  • flamethrowers — Plural form of flamethrower.
  • flash picture — a photograph made using flash photography.
  • flashed glass — clear glass flashed with a thin layer of colored glass or a coating of metallic oxide.
  • flatbed press — a printing machine on which the type forme is carried on a flat bed under a revolving paper-bearing cylinder
  • flavoproteins — Plural form of flavoprotein.
  • flemish giant — one of a breed of large domestic rabbits of Belgian origin, having a solid gray, white, or black coat, and raised for its meat and fur.
  • flowering ash — a variety of ash tree that produces conspicuous flowers
  • fluophosphate — fluorophosphate.
  • flutterboards — Plural form of flutterboard.
  • fly fisherman — one who fishes by fly-casting
  • 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.
  • fool's errand — a completely absurd, pointless, or useless errand.
  • foolhardiness — recklessly or thoughtlessly bold; foolishly rash or venturesome.
  • 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).
  • force a smile — to make oneself smile
  • formal system — an uninterpreted symbolic system whose syntax is precisely defined, and on which a relation of deducibility is defined in purely syntactic terms; a logistic system
  • fowler's toad — an eastern U.S. toad, Bufo woodhousii fowleri, having an almost patternless white belly.
  • fractionalise — Alt form fractionalize.
  • fraser island — an island off the south-east coast of Queensland and the largest sand island in the world; contains rainforests, heathlands, and freshwater lakes; a national park (since 1976) and a World Heritage site (since 1992). Area: 1840 sq km (710 sq miles). Pop: 194 (2011)
  • 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.
  • frise aileron — an aircraft wing control surface designed with its leading edge extending forward of its axis of rotation so that when the aileron's trailing edge is raised the leading edge extends below the bottom surface of the wing.
  • frosted glass — etched glass with a translucent surface
  • 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.
  • functionalise — to make functional.
  • 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.
  • gallimaufries — Plural form of gallimaufry.
  • gallows frame — headframe.
  • game of skill — a game in which the outcome is determined by skill rather than by chance, as chess.
  • garrison life — the life of troops who maintain and guard a military base or fortified place
  • general staff — a group of officers who are without command and whose duty is to assist high commanders in planning and carrying out orders in peace and war.
  • granuliferous — full of granules, or producing granules
  • gulf of gabès — an inlet of the Mediterranean on the E coast of Tunisia
  • half measures — inadequate measures or actions
  • half-deserted — (of a place) not having many inhabitants, visitors, etc
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?