15-letter words containing a, f, l, o
- shove-halfpenny — a shuffleboard game played with coins or brass disks that are pushed by the hand and thumb down a board toward a scoring pit.
- simple fraction — a ratio of two integers.
- slashdot effect — a temporary surge in the numbers visiting a website and consequent service slowdown or even server crash that sometimes arises as a result of a new link being set up from a more popular website
- sleight of hand — skill in feats requiring quick and clever movements of the hands, especially for entertainment or deception, as jugglery, card or coin magic, etc.; legerdemain.
- slumpflationary — of or relating to slumpflation
- snowball effect — a process of continuously accelerating change in size, importance, etc
- social benefits — the social welfare provision made available to those in need
- soft-shell clam — an edible clam, Mya arenaria, inhabiting waters along both coasts of North America, having an oval, relatively thin, whitish shell.
- soft-shell crab — a crab, especially the blue crab, that has recently molted and therefore has a soft, edible shell.
- spanish trefoil — alfalfa.
- spirits of salt — a solution of hydrochloric acid in water
- starfish flower — carrion flower (def 2).
- streamline flow — the flow of a fluid past an object such that the velocity at any fixed point in the fluid is constant or varies in a regular manner.
- subprofessional — being below professional standards: subprofessional health care.
- sunflower state — Kansas (used as a nickname).
- syllabification — to form or divide into syllables.
- teaching fellow — a holder of a teaching fellowship.
- tentaculiferous — having tentacles
- tetrafunctional — pertaining to molecules or groups that can bond at four sites.
- the holy family — the infant Jesus, Mary, and St Joseph
- the rule of law — the principle that no one is above the law and that everyone must follow the law
- ticket of leave — (formerly) a permit allowing a convict to leave prison, under certain restrictions, and go to work before having served a full term, somewhat similar to a certificate of parole.
- to fall foul of — If you fall foul of someone or run foul of them, you do something which gets you into trouble with them.
- to fly the flag — If you fly the flag, you show that you are proud of your country, or that you support a particular cause, especially when you are in a foreign country or when few other people do.
- to get ahold of — to manage to find, contact, or obtain someone or something
- to grab hold of — Hold is used in expressions such as grab hold of, catch hold of, and get hold of, to indicate that you close your hand tightly around something, for example to stop something moving or falling.
- to play footsie — If someone plays footsie with you, they touch your feet with their own feet, for example under a table, often as a playful way of expressing their romantic or sexual feelings towards you.
- traffic control — management of road use
- transfer lounge — the place in an airport where you wait for a transfer from one flight to another
- transform fault — a strike-slip fault that offsets a mid-ocean ridge in opposing directions on either side of an axis of seafloor spreading.
- trifluoperazine — a compound, C 21 H 24 F 3 N 3 S, used as an antipsychotic.
- ultrafastidious — extremely fastidious
- ultrafiltration — Physical Chemistry. a filter for purifying sols, having a membrane with pores sufficiently small to prevent the passage of the suspended particles.
- ultramicrofiche — ultrafiche.
- unaffordability — that can be afforded; believed to be within one's financial means: attractive new cars at affordable prices.
- uninformatively — in an uninformative manner
- velcro fastener — a fastener made of Velcro
- viral infection — disease caused by a virus
- vulgar fraction — common fraction.
- wager of battle — (in medieval Britain) a pledge to do battle for a cause, esp to decide guilt or innocence by single combat
- waterfall model — (programming) A software life-cycle or product life-cycle model, described by W. W. Royce in 1970, in which development is supposed to proceed linearly through the phases of requirements analysis, design, implementation, testing (validation), integration and maintenance. The Waterfall Model is considered old-fashioned or simplistic by proponents of object-oriented design which often uses the spiral model instead. Earlier phases are sometimes called "upstream" and later ones "downstream". Compare: iterative model.
- waterford glass — fine cut or gilded glass made in Waterford, Ireland, having a slight blue cast due to the presence of cobalt.
- welfare officer — a person who gives people help and advice
- well-formulated — to express in precise form; state definitely or systematically: He finds it extremely difficult to formulate his new theory.
- windfall profit — a profit that arises thanks to an external event over which the person profiting had no control
- wolf-rayet star — a very hot (35,000–100,000 K) and luminous star in the early stages of evolution, with broad emission lines in its spectrum.
- wrongful arrest — the act of arresting someone without proper reason
- yellow goatfish — a schooling goatfish, Mulloidichthys martinicus, inhabiting the Atlantic Ocean from Florida to Panama.