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20-letter words containing a, l, o, t, r

  • file descriptor leak — (programming)   (Or "fd leak" /F D leek/) A kind of programming bug analogous to a core leak, in which a program fails to close file descriptors ("fd"s) after file operations are completed, and thus eventually runs out of them. See leak.
  • financial controller — a senior executive in usually commercial organization who is in charge of financial affairs and oversees such things as the preparation of budgets and accounts
  • first earl of cromer — 1st Earl of, Evelyn Baring.
  • flat-plate collector — a type of solar collector consisting of a series of flat glass or plastic plates with black metal surfaces that absorb solar energy.
  • flavour of the month — If you think that something or someone is very popular at a particular time, you can say that they are flavour of the month.
  • flight data recorder — a recording device that records relevant data during an aircraft's flight
  • florence nightingale — Florence ("the Lady with the Lamp") 1820–1910, English nurse: reformer of hospital conditions and procedures; reorganizer of nurse's training programs.
  • fold-and-thrust belt — a linear or arcuate region of the earth's surface that has been subjected to severe folding and thrust faulting
  • for all one is worth — good or important enough to justify (what is specified): advice worth taking; a place worth visiting.
  • for sb's delectation — If you do something for someone's delectation, you do it to give them enjoyment or pleasure.
  • fore-and-aft topsail — gaff topsail (def 1).
  • fore-topgallant mast — the spar or section of a spar forming the topgallant portion of a foremast on a ship.
  • forty-ninth parallel — an informal name for the Canadian border with the USA, which is in part delineated by the parallel line of latitude at 49°N
  • fourth international — a loose federation of small groups of radical socialists formed in 1936 under the leadership of Leon Trotsky and hostile to the Soviet Union. Compare international (def 6).
  • fractionating column — a long vertical cylinder used in fractional distillation, in which internal reflux enables separation of high and low boiling fractions to take place
  • frankfurt horizontal — Craniometry. the plane established when right and left poria and left orbitale are in the same horizontal plane.
  • frequency modulation — FM.
  • fridtjof nansen land — Franz Josef Land.
  • front-end volatility — Front-end volatility is the ability of the fractions with lower boiling points, such as butane, to evaporate at normal temperatures.
  • frontenac et palluau — Comte de (Louis de Buade) 1620?–98, French governor of New France 1672–82, 1689–98.
  • fulminate of mercury — a gray, crystalline solid, Hg(CNO) 2 , used chiefly in the manufacture of commercial and military detonators.
  • general postal union — former name of Universal Postal Union. Abbreviation: GPU.
  • general practitioner — a medical practitioner whose practice is not limited to any specific branch of medicine or class of diseases. Abbreviation: G.P.
  • generative phonology — a theory of phonology that uses a set of rules to derive phonetic representations from abstract underlying forms.
  • gentleman of fortune — an adventurer.
  • get a real computer! — (jargon)   A typical hacker response to news that somebody is having trouble getting work done on a toy system or bitty box. The threshold for "real computer" rises with time. As of mid-1993 it meant multi-tasking, with a hard disk, and an address space bigger than 16 megabytes. At this time, according to GLS, computers with character-only displays were verging on "unreal". In 2001, a real computer has a one gigahertz processor, 128 MB of RAM, 20 GB of hard disk, and runs Linux.
  • get away from it all — If you get away from it all, you have a holiday in a place that is very different from where you normally live and work.
  • glyceryl monoacetate — acetin.
  • go like the clappers — to move extremely fast
  • gorno-altai republic — a constituent republic of S Russia: mountainous, rising over 4350 m (14 500 ft) in the Altai Mountains of the south. Capital: Gorno-Altaisk. Pop: 202 900 (2002). Area: 92 600 sq km (35 740 sq miles)
  • grade school teacher — a teacher in a grade school
  • graphics accelerator — (graphics, hardware)   Hardware (often an extra circuit board) to perform tasks such as plotting lines and surfaces in two or three dimensions, filling, shading and hidden line removal.
  • gravitational radius — Schwarzschild radius.
  • greatest lower bound — a lower bound that is greater than or equal to all the lower bounds of a given set: 1 is the greatest lower bound of the set consisting of 1, 2, 3. Abbreviation: glb.
  • hampton court palace — a royal palace in Hampton, London, built in 1515 by Cardinal Wolsey
  • health questionnaire — A health questionnaire is a list of questions about someone's health issued by underwriters before accepting a person as a risk.
  • helicopter parenting — a style of child rearing in which an overprotective mother or father discourages a child's independence by being too involved in the child's life: In typical helicopter parenting, a mother or father swoops in at any sign of challenge or discomfort.
  • heston and isleworth — a former borough, now part of Hounslow, in SE England, near London.
  • heteropolysaccharide — (carbohydrate) any polysaccharide formed from two or more different kinds of monosaccharide.
  • hexafluoroantimonate — (inorganic chemistry) The anion SbF6- or any salt containing this anion; it is used as an acidic catalyst in epoxide opening reactions.
  • hierarchical routing — The complex problem of routing on large networks can be simplified by breaking a network into a hierarchy of smaller networks, where each level is responsible for its own routing. The Internet has, basically, three levels: the backbones, the mid-levels, and the stub networks. The backbones know how to route between the mid-levels, the mid-levels know how to route between the sites, and each site (being an autonomous system) knows how to route internally. See also Exterior Gateway Protocol, Interior Gateway Protocol, transit network.
  • historical sociology — the sociological study of the origins and development of societies and of other social phenomena that seeks underlying laws and principles.
  • holy water sprinkler — morning star (def 2).
  • honeysuckle ornament — anthemion.
  • horizontal microcode — (processor)   Microcode using horizontal encoding.
  • horizontal scan rate — (hardware)   (HSR) The measure of how many scan lines of pixels a monitor can display in one second, expressed in kHz (generally somewhere between 20 and 100 kHz). The HSR is controlled by the horizontal sync signal generated by the video controller, but is limited by the speed with which the monitor can scan the electron beam horizontally across the screen and then return it to the beginning of the next line.
  • horizontally opposed — A horizontally opposed engine has the cylinders set horizontally at either side of the crankshaft.
  • hospitality industry — the hotel and accommodation industry
  • hot under the collar — the part of a shirt, coat, dress, blouse, etc., that encompasses the neckline of the garment and is sewn permanently to it, often so as to fold or roll over.
  • houses of parliament — In Britain, the Houses of Parliament are the British parliament, which consists of two parts, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The buildings where the British parliament does its work are also called the Houses of Parliament.
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