24-letter words containing a, f, l, e
- family income supplement — a benefit formerly paid to low-income families
- federal power commission — FPC.
- federal reserve district — the district served by a certain Federal Reserve Bank.
- federal trade commission — FTC.
- ferdinand lewis alcindor — (Ferdinand) Lew(is, Jr.) original name of Abdul-Jabbar.
- fight like kilkenny cats — to fight until both parties are destroyed
- fight or flight reaction — the response of the sympathetic nervous system to a stressful event, preparing the body to fight or flee, associated with the adrenal secretion of epinephrine and characterized by increased heart rate, increased blood flow to the brain and muscles, raised sugar levels, sweaty palms and soles, dilated pupils, and erect hairs.
- fight-or-flight reaction — the response of the sympathetic nervous system to a stressful event, preparing the body to fight or flee, associated with the adrenal secretion of epinephrine and characterized by increased heart rate, increased blood flow to the brain and muscles, raised sugar levels, sweaty palms and soles, dilated pupils, and erect hairs.
- flexible assembly system — A flexible assembly system is a set of machines or robots that can assemble many different kinds of products.
- floating decimal (point) — a decimal (point) whose position is not fixed
- floating point underflow — underflow
- floating-point specratio — SPECfp92
- flue gas desulfurization — Flue gas desulfurization is the removal of pollutants containing sulfur from flue gas.
- follow someone's example — If you follow someone's example, you behave in the same way as they did in the past, or in a similar way, especially because you admire them.
- footloose and fancy-free — If you describe someone as footloose and fancy-free, you mean that they are not married or in a similar relationship, and you therefore consider them to have very few responsibilities or commitments.
- french equatorial africa — a former federation of French territories in central Africa, including Chad, Gabon, Middle Congo (now People's Republic of the Congo), and Ubangi-Shari (now Central African Republic): each became independent in 1960.
- frequent-flyer programme — a plan or system under which frequent flyers earn rewards for being regular customers
- functional specification — (programming, project) A description of what a system (e.g. a piece of software) does or should do (but not how it should do it). The functional specification is one of the inputs to the design process. See IEEE/ANSI Std. 610.12-1990.
- general of the air force — the highest ranking officer in the U.S. Air Force.
- general protection fault — General Protection Failure
- graphical user interface — a software interface designed to standardize and simplify the use of computer programs, as by using a mouse to manipulate text and images on a display screen featuring icons, windows, and menus.
- great crested flycatcher — a North American flycatcher, Myiarchus crinitus, noted for its use of the castoff skins of snakes in building its nest.
- ground-fault interrupter — a circuit breaker that senses currents caused by ground faults and quickly shuts off power before damage can occur to generating equipment.
- gulf cooperation council — an association of Persian Gulf nations formed for the purpose of collective defense against aggression. Abbreviation: GCC.
- hardware circular buffer — (programming, hardware) digital signal processors which support hardware circular buffers automatically generate and increment pointers for memory accesses which wrap to the beginning of the buffer when its end is reached, thus saving the time and instructions otherwise needed to ensure that the address pointer stays within the boundary of the buffer, and speeding the execution of repetitive DSP algorithms.
- have (or get) cold feet — to be (or become) timid or fearful
- have carnal knowledge of — to have sexual intercourse with
- hierarchical data format — (file format, data) (HDF) A library and multi-object file format for the transfer of graphical and numerical data between computeres. The freely available HDF distribution consists of the library, command line utilities, test suite source, Java interface, and the Java-based HDF Viewer (JHV). HDF supports several different data models, including multidimensional arrays, raster images, and tables. Each defines a specific aggregate data type and provides an API for reading, writing, and organising the data and metadata. New data models can be added by the HDF developers or users. HDF is self-describing, allowing an application to interpret the structure and contents of a file without any outside information. One HDF file can hold a mixture of related objects which can be accessed as a group or as individual objects. Users can create their own grouping structures called "vgroups". HDF files can be shared across most common platforms, including many workstations and high performance computers. An HDF file created on one computer can be read on a different system without modification.
- hierarchical file system — (file system) A file system in which the files are organised into a hierarchy. The nodes of the hierarchy are called directories while the leaves are the files themselves. See also root directory. Compare flat file system.
- immunofluorescence assay — a diagnostic blood test using the technique of immunofluorescence. Abbreviation: IFA.
- implicit differentiation — a method of finding the derivative of an implicit function by taking the derivative of each term with respect to the independent variable while keeping the derivative of the dependent variable with respect to the independent variable in symbolic form and then solving for that derivative.
- in words of one syllable — simply; bluntly
- independent logical file — (database) (ILF) One kind of dynamic database management system. Examples of ILF databases are INQUIRE, ADABAS, NOMAD, FOCUS and DATACOM.
- knowledge sharing effort — (project) An ARPA project developing techniques and methods for building large-scale knowledge bases which are sharable and reusable.
- lab for computer science — MIT. http://lcs.mit.edu/.
- land of the midnight sun — any of those countries containing land within the Arctic Circle where there is a midnight sun in midsummer, especially Norway, Sweden, or Finland.
- laugh in a person's face — to show open contempt or defiance towards a person
- law of supply and demand — the theory that prices are determined by the interaction of supply and demand: an increase in supply will lower prices if not accompanied by increased demand, and an increase in demand will raise prices unless accompanied by increased supply
- leave someone to himself — not to control or direct someone
- like a fish out of water — out of place, out of one's element
- line of least resistance — the easiest, but not necessarily the best or most honourable, course of action
- liquid components of gas — Liquid components of gas are associated hydrocarbons in natural gas, which include ethane, propane, and butane.
- local government officer — an employee of a local council
- longitudinal coefficient — the ratio of the immersed volume of a hull to the product obtained by multiplying its length on the water line by the immersed area of the midship transverse section, all assuming a given depth of immersion of the hull.
- look someone in the face — to look directly at a person without fear or shame
- low voltage differential — (hardware) (LVD) A method of driving SCSI cables that will be formalised in the SCSI-3 specifications. LVD uses less power than the current differential drive (HVD), is less expensive and will allow the higher speeds of Ultra-2 SCSI. LVD requires 3.3 Volts DC instead of 5 Volts DC for HVD.
- make one's presence felt — If you make your presence felt, you do something which makes people notice you or pay attention to you.
- maximum lifetime benefit — The maximum lifetime benefit of a health insurance plan is the maximum amount of money that it will pay out.
- mean length of utterance — the mean number of morphemes produced per sentence, used especially as a measure of child language development. Abbreviation: MLU.
- mean time between faults — Mean Time Between Failures