13-letter words containing a, f, s
- 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.
- first-aid kit — emergency medical set
- fish geranium — zonal geranium.
- fish hatchery — a facility where fish eggs are hatched and the fry raised, especially to stock lakes, streams, and ponds.
- fishing banks — a place where fish are abundant, as off Newfoundland
- fishing smack — any of various fore-and-aft-rigged fishing vessels of rather large size, often containing a well to keep the catch alive.
- 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.
- flaming sword — a cultivated bromeliad, Vriesea splendens, native to French Guiana, having long, red bracts and yellow flowers.
- flash fiction — very short works of fiction that are typically no longer than a couple of pages and may be as short as one paragraph.
- flash picture — a photograph made using flash photography.
- flash-forward — a device in the narrative of a motion picture, novel, etc., by which a future event or scene is inserted into the chronological structure of the work.
- 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.
- flirtatiously — given or inclined to flirtation.
- floating ribs — the eleventh and twelfth pairs of ribs, not attached to the breastbone or to other ribs but only to the vertebrae
- florianopolis — a state in S Brazil. 36,856 sq. mi. (95,455 sq. km). Capital: Florianópolis.
- floristically — In a floristic manner.
- flowering ash — a variety of ash tree that produces conspicuous flowers
- fluophosphate — fluorophosphate.
- fluorocarbons — Plural form of fluorocarbon.
- fluoroplastic — any of the plastics, as Teflon, in which hydrogen atoms of the hydrocarbon chains are replaced by fluorine atoms.
- 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 chrissake — for Christ's sake
- for sb's part — When you are describing people's thoughts or actions, you can say for her part or for my part, for example, to introduce what a particular person thinks or does.
- for sb's sake — When you do something for someone's sake, you do it in order to help them or make them happy.
- 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).
- for-instances — an instance or example: Give me a for-instance of what you mean.
- force a smile — to make oneself smile
- forearm smash — a blow like a punch delivered with the forearm in certain types of wrestling
- foreshadowing — to show or indicate beforehand; prefigure: Political upheavals foreshadowed war.
- forest ranger — any of the officers employed by the government to supervise the care and preservation of forests, especially public forests.
- 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
- formalisation — Alternative spelling of formalization.
- formularising — Present participle of formularise.
- formularistic — relating to formularization
- fort sheridan — a military reservation in NE Illinois, on W shore of Lake Michigan S of Lake Forest.
- fortunateness — The quality of being fortunate; fortune; luck.
- forward slash — a short oblique stroke (/), or slash, especially one used in computer programming or to specify an Internet address or computer filename.
- fosamprenavir — (pharmaceutical drug) An anti-retroviral prodrug of the protease inhibitor amprenavir. It is used to treat HIV infected patients.
- fossilisation — Alternative spelling of fossilization.