17-letter words containing a, m, n, o, f
- old norman french — Norman French (sense 1)
- one-parent family — A one-parent family is a family that consists of one parent and his or her children living together.
- organized ferment — ferment (def 1).
- palette of narmer — a king of Egypt identified by modern scholars as the Menes of tradition and depicted as the unifier of Upper and Lower Egypt on an ancient slate tablet (Narmer Palette or Palette of Narmer) c3200 b.c. with relief carvings on both sides.
- performance bonus — a monetary bonus paid to staff who have performed well in their job
- performance drugs — the drugs that are taken illegally by athletes to enhance their sporting performance
- phase of the moon — Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to depend. Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been able to determine. "This feature depends on having the channel open in mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the moon." See also heisenbug. True story: Once upon a time there was a bug that really did depend on the phase of the moon. There was a little subroutine that had traditionally been used in various programs at MIT to calculate an approximation to the moon's true phase. GLS incorporated this routine into a Lisp program that, when it wrote out a file, would print a timestamp line almost 80 characters long. Very occasionally the first line of the message would be too long and would overflow onto the next line, and when the file was later read back in the program would barf. The length of the first line depended on both the precise date and time and the length of the phase specification when the timestamp was printed, and so the bug literally depended on the phase of the moon! The first paper edition of the Jargon File (Steele-1983) included an example of one of the timestamp lines that exhibited this bug, but the typesetter "corrected" it. This has since been described as the phase-of-the-moon-bug bug.
- phenylformic acid — benzoic acid.
- plains of abraham — a high plain adjoining the city of Quebec, Canada: battlefield where the English under Wolfe defeated the French under Montcalm in 1759.
- portfolio manager — a person employed by others to make investments for them
- pre-manifestation — an act of manifesting.
- pre-modifications — an act or instance of modifying.
- pro forma invoice — an invoice issued before an order is placed or before the goods are delivered giving all the details and the cost of the goods
- professional army — an army of trained soldiers
- programming fluid — (jargon) (Or "wirewater") Coffee, unleaded coffee (decaffeinated), Cola, or any caffeinacious stimulant. Many hackers consider these essential for those all-night hacking runs.
- recursion formula — a formula for determining the next term of a sequence from one or more of the preceding terms.
- reduction formula — a formula, such as sin (90° ± A) = cos A, expressing the values of a trigonometric function of any angle greater than 90° in terms of a function of an acute angle
- saint elmo's fire — corona discharge.
- self-commendation — the act of commending; recommendation; praise: commendation for a job well done.
- self-condemnation — the act of condemning.
- self-confirmation — the act of confirming.
- self-emancipation — the act of emancipating.
- self-incompatible — not capable of self-pollination.
- semi-professional — actively engaged in some field or sport for pay but on a part-time basis: semiprofessional baseball players.
- sound effects man — a man who produces sounds artificially or reproduces them from a recording, etc, to create a theatrical effect, such as the bringing together of two halves of a hollow coconut shell to simulate a horse's gallop. Such sound effects are used in plays, films, etc
- south farmingdale — a town on central Long Island, in SE New York.
- terminal platform — (in the oil industry) an offshore platform from which oil or gas is pumped ashore through a pipeline
- the fall (of man) — Adam's sin of yielding to temptation in eating the forbidden fruit, and his subsequent loss of grace
- the morning after — the aftereffects of excess, esp a hangover
- thermal diffusion — the separation of constituents, often isotopes, of a fluid under the influence of a temperature gradient.
- to fan the flames — If someone or something fans the flames of a situation or feeling, usually a bad one, they make it more intense or extreme in some way.
- traffic policeman — a policeman controlling traffic, esp while stationed at an intersection, or enforcing traffic regulations
- transformationist — transformist.
- uncomfortableness — causing discomfort or distress; painful; irritating.
- unconformity trap — An unconformity trap is a hydrocarbon trap where the closure is made by an unconformity (= a formation of rock layers which represents a gap in the geological record).
- uniformitarianism — supporting, conforming to, or derived from a theory or doctrine about uniformity, especially on the subject of geology.
- unprofessionalism — not professional; not pertaining to or characteristic of a profession.
- vale of glamorgan — a county borough of S Wales, created in 1996 from parts of South Glamorgan and Mid Glamorgan. Administrative centre: Barry. Pop: 121 200 (2003 est). Area: 295 sq km (114 sq miles)
- welfare economics — a branch of economics concerned with improving human welfare and social conditions chiefly through the optimum distribution of wealth, the relief or reduction of unemployment, etc.
- woman of the hour — a woman honored by a group.