17-letter words containing a, f, t, r
- fluvioterrestrial — (of animals) able to live in rivers and on land
- follow the leader — a child's game in which players, one behind the other, follow a leader and must repeat or follow everything he or she does.
- footmen's gallery — the rearmost section of seats in the balcony of an English theater, especially in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
- for all the world — the earth or globe, considered as a planet.
- for the most part — a portion or division of a whole that is separate or distinct; piece, fragment, fraction, or section; constituent: the rear part of the house; to glue the two parts together.
- fore-and-aft sail — any of various sails, as jib-headed sails, gaff sails, lugsails, lateen sails, spritsails, staysails, and jibs, that do not set on yards and whose normal position, when not trimmed, is in a fore-and-aft direction amidships.
- foreign relations — (used with a singular verb) the field of foreign affairs: an expert in foreign relations.
- foreign secretary — foreign minister.
- formative element — a morpheme that serves as an affix, not as a base, or root, in word formation.
- fort leonard wood — a military reservation and U.S. Army training center in SW Missouri, SW of Rolla.
- fort walton beach — a city in NW Florida.
- forward contracts — Forward contracts are agreements to buy something in the future for a price that has been agreed today.
- forward quotation — the price quoted on a forward delivery.
- foundation course — A foundation course is a course that you do at some colleges and universities in order to prepare yourself for a longer or more advanced course.
- four-part harmony — harmony in which each chord has four tones, creating, in sum, four melodic lines.
- four-star general — high-ranking military officer
- fourier transform — a mapping of a function, as a signal, that is defined in one domain, as space or time, into another domain, as wavelength or frequency, where the function is represented in terms of sines and cosines.
- fractal dimension — (mathematics) A common type of fractal dimension is the Hausdorff-Besicovich Dimension, but there are several different ways of computing fractal dimension. Fractal dimension can be calculated by taking the limit of the quotient of the log change in object size and the log change in measurement scale, as the measurement scale approaches zero. The differences come in what is exactly meant by "object size" and what is meant by "measurement scale" and how to get an average number out of many different parts of a geometrical object. Fractal dimensions quantify the static *geometry* of an object. For example, consider a straight line. Now blow up the line by a factor of two. The line is now twice as long as before. Log 2 / Log 2 = 1, corresponding to dimension 1. Consider a square. Now blow up the square by a factor of two. The square is now 4 times as large as before (i.e. 4 original squares can be placed on the original square). Log 4 / log 2 = 2, corresponding to dimension 2 for the square. Consider a snowflake curve formed by repeatedly replacing ___ with _/\_, where each of the 4 new lines is 1/3 the length of the old line. Blowing up the snowflake curve by a factor of 3 results in a snowflake curve 4 times as large (one of the old snowflake curves can be placed on each of the 4 segments _/\_). Log 4 / log 3 = 1.261... Since the dimension 1.261 is larger than the dimension 1 of the lines making up the curve, the snowflake curve is a fractal. [sci.fractals FAQ].
- fractionalization — Separation into parts by fractionalizing.
- frankenstein food — any foodstuff that has been genetically modified
- fraternal society — a club or other association, usually of men, having a limited membership and devoted to professional, religious, charitable, or social activities.
- freezer container — a rigid plastic container used to hold food that is to be frozen
- freight forwarder — a person or firm that arranges to pick up or deliver goods on instructions of a shipper or a consignee from or to a point by various necessary conveyances and common carriers.
- freight insurance — insurance paid on goods in transport
- freund's adjuvant — a water-in-oil emulsion injected with immunogen (Freund's incomplete adjuvant) or with immunogen and killed mycobacteria (Freund's complete adjuvant) to enhance the immune response to the immunogen.
- from hand to hand — the terminal, prehensile part of the upper limb in humans and other primates, consisting of the wrist, metacarpal area, fingers, and thumb.
- from head to foot — all over one's body
- front-end payment — a payment required or incurred in advance of a project in order to get it under way
- front-line player — a regular player on a sports team or one who plays in the farthest forward position
- frostbite sailing — the sport of sailing in temperate latitudes during the winter despite cold weather.
- full load current — A full load current is the largest current that a motor or other device is designed to carry under particular conditions.
- functional isomer — any of several structural isomers that have the same molecular formula but with the atoms connected in different ways and therefore falling into different functional groups.
- further education — adult education.
- fuss and feathers — an excessively elaborate or pretentious display; ostentation.
- get a rise out of — to get up from a lying, sitting, or kneeling posture; assume an upright position: She rose and walked over to greet me. With great effort he rose to his knees.
- get off the grass — an exclamation of disbelief
- get to first base — Baseball. the first in counterclockwise order of the bases from home plate. the position of the player covering the area of the infield near first base.
- go for the collar — to go without a hit in a game
- go-faster stripes — (jargon) chrome. Mainstream in some parts of UK.
- golf ball printer — IBM 2741
- grandfather clock — a pendulum floor clock having a case as tall as or taller than a person; tall-case clock; long-case clock.
- grandstand finish — a close or exciting ending to a sports match or competition
- grapefruit league — a series of training games played by major-league teams before the opening of the season (so named because they take place in the citrus-growing South, as in Florida).
- great rift valley — a series of rift valleys running from N to S, from the Jordan Valley in SW Asia to Mozambique in SE Africa.
- great vowel shift — a series of changes in the quality of the long vowels between Middle and Modern English as a result of which all were raised, while the high vowels (ē) and (o̅o̅), already at the upper limit, underwent breaking to become the diphthongs (ī) and (ou).
- great-grandfather — a grandfather of one's father or mother.
- greater forkbeard — a fish of the Phycidae family
- grey-faced petrel — a dark-coloured New Zealand petrel, Pterodroma macroptera gouldi
- grooved fricative — a fricative, as (s), in which air is channeled through a groove along the center of the tongue.
- hairline fracture — a very fine crack in a bone