18-letter words containing f
- box-office success — a very successful film or play that earns a lot of money
- branch to fishkill — (IBM: from the location of one of the corporation's facilities) Any unexpected jump in a program that produces catastrophic or just plain weird results. See jump off into never-never land, hyperspace.
- branching fraction — (in branching) the proportion of the disintegrating nuclei that follow a particular branch to the total number of disintegrating nuclides
- breach of contract — the act of breaking the conditions of a contract
- breach of security — an act that violates a country, area, or building's security measures
- brute force attack — (cryptography) A method of breaking a cipher (that is, to decrypt a specific encrypted text) by trying every possible key. The quicker the brute force attack, the weaker the cipher. Feasibility of brute force attack depends on the key length of the cipher, and on the amount of computational power available to the attacker. Brute force attack is impossible against the ciphers with variable-size key, such as a one-time pad cipher.
- built-in self test — (BIST) The technique of designing circuits with additional logic which can be used to test proper operation of the primary (functional) logic.
- burn one's fingers — to suffer from having meddled or been rash
- bursa of fabricius — a lymphoid gland of the cloaca in birds, believed to function in disease resistance, and closing or disappearing as the bird ages.
- by fits and starts — spasmodically; without concerted effort
- california current — a cold current originating in the northern part of the Pacific Ocean, flowing SE along the coast of W North America.
- california fuchsia — a North American onagraceous plant, Zauschneria californica, with tubular scarlet flowers
- california rosebay — a Pacific coast shrub or tree (Rhododendron californicum) of the heath family, with rosy or purplish flowers
- california-fuchsia — a plant belonging to the genus Fuchsia, of the evening primrose family, including many varieties cultivated for their handsome drooping flowers.
- campaign furniture — furniture, as chests or desks, having metal hinges on the corners and handles on the sides.
- cap of maintenance — a ceremonial cap or hat worn or carried as a symbol of office, rank, etc
- cartilaginous fish — any fish of the class Chondrichthyes, including the sharks, skates, and rays, having a skeleton composed entirely of cartilage
- cash-for-questions — of, involved in, or relating to a scandal in which some MPs were accused of accepting bribes to ask particular questions in Parliament
- catherine of siena — Saint. 1347–80, Italian mystic and ascetic; patron saint of the Dominican order. Feast day: April 29
- cauliflower cheese — a dish of cauliflower with a cheese sauce, eaten hot
- cauliflower fungus — a large edible white to yellowish cauliflowerlike mushroom, Sparassis radicata, widely distributed in North America.
- center of symmetry — a point within a crystal through which any straight line extends to points on opposite surfaces of the crystal at equal distances.
- centre of pressure — the point in a body at which the resultant pressure acts when the body is immersed in a fluid
- centrifugal clutch — an automatic clutch in which the friction surfaces are engaged by weighted levers acting under centrifugal force at a certain speed of rotation
- cereal leaf beetle — an Old World leaf beetle, Oulema melanopus, introduced into North America in 1962: a serious pest of small grains, especially oats and cereal grasses.
- certification mark — a mark that certifies the origin, material, quality, mode of manufacture, accuracy, or other characteristic of a product or service: “UL” is a certification mark for appliances meeting the safety standards of Underwriters Laboratories, Inc.
- chamber of horrors — a room, for example in a waxworks, containing objects, images or representations of people or scenes that are believed likely to frighten or horrify visitors
- charge of quarters — a member of the armed forces who handles administration in his or her unit, esp after duty hours
- check verification — Check verification is a system that checks national databases of information about individuals to make sure that checks will be honored and fraud is not being committed.
- children of israel — the Jews; Hebrews
- chinese fire drill — a state of chaotic, often clamorous disorder.
- chlorofluorocarbon — Chlorofluorocarbons are the same as CFCs.
- chord of the sixth — sixth chord.
- christian reformed — of or relating to a Protestant denomination (Christian Reformed Church) organized in the U.S. in 1857 by groups that had seceded from the Dutch Reformed Church.
- church of scotland — the established church in Scotland, Calvinist in doctrine and Presbyterian in constitution
- classified section — the part of a publication that contains classified advertising
- claw-and-ball foot — ball-and-claw foot.
- coffee-table music — unadventurous music
- college of justice — the official name for the Scottish Court of Session; the supreme court of Scotland
- colossus of rhodes — a giant bronze statue of Apollo built on Rhodes in about 292–280 bc; destroyed by an earthquake in 225 bc; one of the Seven Wonders of the World
- comb-footed spider — any of numerous spiders constituting the family Theridiidae, having a comblike row of bristles on the tarsi of the hind legs.
- combustion furnace — a furnace used in the laboratory to carry out elemental analysis of organic compounds
- commander in chief — Also, Commander in Chief. the supreme commander of the armed forces of a nation or, sometimes, of several allied nations: The president is the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force.
- commander-in-chief — A commander-in-chief is a senior officer who is in charge of all the forces in a particular area.
- commanding officer — A commanding officer is an officer who is in charge of a military unit.
- committed facility — an agreement by a bank to provide a customer with funds up to a specified limit at a specified rate of interest
- common data format — (library) (CDF) A library and toolkit based on a self-describing data format for scalar and multidimensional data. CDF aims to be platform- and discipline-independent. A scientific data management package (CDF Library) allows developers to manage data and metadata through APIs. CDF has built-in support for data compression (gZip, RLE, Huffman) and files larger than two gigabytes. There are interfaces for C, FORTRAN, Java, Perl, C#, Visual Basic, IDL and MATLAB.
- compassion fatigue — the inability to react sympathetically to a crisis, disaster, etc, because of overexposure to previous crises, disasters, etc
- compliance officer — a specialist, usually a lawyer, employed by a financial group operating in a variety of fields and for multiple clients to ensure that no conflict of interest arises and that all obligations and regulations are complied with
- composite function — a function obtained from two given functions, where the range of one function is contained in the domain of the second function, by assigning to an element in the domain of the first function that element in the range of the second function whose inverse image is the image of the element.