21-letter words containing a, f, l, s
- professional services — (job) A department of a supplier providing consultancy and programming manpower for the supplier's products.
- psychological warfare — the use of propaganda, threats, and other psychological techniques to mislead, intimidate, demoralize, or otherwise influence the thinking or behavior of an opponent.
- pull sth out of a hat — To pull something out of the hat means to do something unexpected which helps you to succeed, often when you are failing.
- reconnaissance flight — a flight made by an aircraft in order to obtain military information about a particular place
- safe in the knowledge — If you do something safe in the knowledge that something else is the case, you do the first thing confidently because you are sure of the second thing.
- sales finance company — a finance company that purchases, at a discount, installment contracts from dealers or that finances retail sales.
- scarlet monkey flower — any of various plants belonging to the genus Mimulus, of the figwort family, as M. cardinalis (scarlet monkey flower) having spotted flowers that resemble a face.
- school of hard knocks — the experience gained from living, especially from disappointment and hard work, regarded as a means of education: The only school he ever attended was the school of hard knocks.
- self-characterization — portrayal; description: the actor's characterization of a politician.
- semantic differential — a technique for measuring the connotative meaning of concepts by having an individual rate each concept on a series of graduated scales, each scale defined by a pair of polar adjectives, as good–bad or strong–weak.
- silicon tetrafluoride — a colorless, fuming gas, SiF 4 , used chiefly in the manufacture of fluosilicic acid.
- single parent benefit — a form of government funded financial assistance paid to single parents
- skeleton at the feast — a person or event that brings gloom or sadness to an occasion of joy or celebration
- social stratification — the act or an instance of stratifying.
- sovereign wealth fund — an investment fund created using the financial assets of a national government
- split-finger fastball — a type of fastball that sinks abruptly as it nears home plate, thrown with the grip used for a forkball
- split-screen facility — a facility allowing different scenes to be shown on screen at the same time
- spotted alfalfa aphid — a pale yellowish aphid, Therioaphis maculata, of the southern U.S., especially west of the Mississippi River, that is marked with black spots and has fine spines on its back: a pest mainly of alfalfa and some other legumes, as clover.
- statistical inference — the theory, methods, and practice of forming judgments about the parameters of a population, usually on the basis of random sampling
- steer clear of sb/sth — If you steer clear of someone or something, you deliberately avoid them.
- stem-and-leaf diagram — a histogram in which the data points falling within each class interval are listed in order
- supplementary benefit — (formerly) an extra amount of money that is paid to someone by the government, in addition to their normal income. Replaced by income support in 1988
- surface of revolution — a surface formed by revolving a plane curve about a given line.
- take one's (own) life — to commit suicide
- tetrabromofluorescein — eosin (def 1).
- the barber of seville — Italian Il barbiere di Siviglia. a comic opera (1816) by Gioacchino Rossini based on a comedy (1775) by Beaumarchais.
- the fall of the cards — the chance distribution of cards in a given deal
- the flickertail state — a name for the state of North Dakota
- the san andreas fault — a geological fault in California
- to play second fiddle — If you play second fiddle to someone, your position is less important than theirs in something that you are doing together.
- to risk life and limb — If someone risks life and limb, they do something very dangerous that may cause them to die or be seriously injured.
- topgallant forecastle — a partial weather deck on top of a forecastle superstructure; forecastle deck.
- transformational rule — Linguistics. a rule of transformational grammar that relates two phrase markers in the course of a derivation from the deep to the surface syntactic representation of a sentence, as by reordering, inserting, or deleting elements; a rule that converts deep structures into surface structures.
- universal affirmative — a proposition of the form “All S is P.” Symbol: A, a.
- universal disk format — (storage, standard) (UDF) A CD-ROM file system standard that is required for DVD ROMs. UDF is the OSTA's replacement for the ISO 9660 file system used on CD-ROMs, but will be mostly used on DVD. DVD multimedia disks use UDF to contain MPEG audio and video streams. To read DVDs you need a DVD drive, the kernel driver for the drive, MPEG video support, and a UDF driver. DVDs containing both UDF filesystems and ISO 9660 filesystems can be read without UDF support. UDF can also be used by CD-R and CD-RW recorders in packet writing mode.
- university of iceland — (body, education) The Home of Fjolnir.
- venus's flower basket — a glass sponge of the genus Euplectella, inhabiting deep waters off the Philippines and Japan, having a cylindrical skeleton formed of an intricate latticework of siliceous spicules.
- volunteers of america — a religious reform and relief organization, similar to the Salvation Army, founded in New York City in 1896 by Ballington Booth, son of William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. Abbreviation: VOA.
- warm silence software — A small company run by(?) Robin Watts, producing software for the Acorn Archimedes.
- what the future holds — If you wonder what the future holds, you wonder what will happen in the future.
- william of malmesbury — William of, William of Malmesbury.
- xilinx netlist format — (language, electronics) (XNF) A Hardware Description Language for electronic circuit design, developed by Xilinx, Inc..