18-letter words containing a, p, r
- farmer-labor party — a political party in Minnesota, founded in 1920 and merged with the Democratic Party in 1944.
- feeping creaturism — /fee'ping kree"ch*r-izm/ A deliberate spoonerism for creeping featurism, meant to imply that the system or program in question has become a misshapen creature of hacks. This term isn"t really well defined, but it sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. It is probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in the dark making their customary noises.
- fermat's last post — (humour) A post to a bug tracker, mailing list or forum in which the author claims to have found a simple fix or workaround for a bug, but never says what it is and never shows up again to explain it (even after others have been puzzling over the bug for years).
- fermat's principle — Optics. the law that the path taken by a ray of light in going from one point to another point will be the path that requires the least time.
- flat address space — (architecture) The memory architecture in which any memory location can be selected from a single contiguous block by a single integer offset. Almost all popular processors have a flat address space, but the Intel x86 family has a segmented address space. A flat address space greatly simplifies programming because of the simple correspondence between addresses (pointers) and integers.
- floating partition — a partition running parallel to and between two joists and resting on blocking between them.
- football supporter — a person who supports a particular football team
- fore-edge painting — a technique of painting a picture on the fore edge of a book, often in such a manner that only when the pages are slightly fanned the picture is revealed.
- forward compatible — forward compatibility
- free-range poultry — poultry kept in natural nonintensive conditions
- ftp software, inc. — (company) Developers of the original PC/TCP Packet Driver specification. Address: 26 Princess St. Wakefield, MA 01880-3004. Telephone: +1 (617) 246 0900.
- fulminating powder — powder that explodes by percussion.
- functional program — (language) A program employing the functional programming approach or written in a functional language.
- funding operations — the conversion of government floating stock or short-term debt into holdings of long-term bonds
- funeral procession — ceremonial cortège at a burial
- gas chromatography — a chromatograph used for the separation of volatile substances.
- gas-permeable lens — a semisoft contact lens, usually removed each day, that allows air to pass through to the eye and affords a wider range of vision corrections than a soft contact lens.
- general precession — the precession that results from both lunisolar precession and planetary precession; precession of the equinoxes.
- gensym corporation — (company) A company that supplies software and services for intelligent operations management. Common applications include quality management, process optimisation, dynamic scheduling, network management, energy and environmental management, and process modelling and simulation. Their products include G2.
- geometrical optics — the branch of optics dealing with light as rays, especially in the study of the effects of lenses and mirrors on light beams and of their combination in optical instruments.
- get the upper hand — gain advantage
- giuseppe garibaldi — Giuseppe [juh-sep-ee;; Italian joo-zep-pe] /dʒəˈsɛp i;; Italian dʒuˈzɛp pɛ/ (Show IPA), 1807–82, Italian patriot and general.
- give a person five — to greet or congratulate someone by slapping raised hands
- grains of paradise — Usually, grains of paradise. one of the pungent, peppery seeds of an African plant, Aframomum melegueta, of the ginger family, used to strengthen cordials and in veterinary medicine.
- grampian mountains — a mountain system of central Scotland, extending from the southwest to the northeast and separating the Highlands from the Lowlands. Highest peak: Ben Nevis, 1344 m (4408 ft)
- grand penitentiary — See under penitentiary (def 3).
- grass-of-parnassus — any plant belonging to the genus Parnassia, of the saxifrage family, growing in marshy areas, having broad, smooth leaves and a single, pale flower.
- grasshopper engine — a steam engine having a piston attached to one end of a beam that is hinged to an upright at the other end, the connecting rod being suspended from near the center of the beam.
- gravitational pull — force of gravity
- gravity escapement — an escapement, used especially in large outdoor clocks, in which the impulse is given to the pendulum by means of a weight falling through a certain distance.
- grease the palm of — to influence by giving money to; bribe
- great expectations — a novel (1861) by Charles Dickens.
- great pastern bone — the part of the foot of a horse, cow, etc., between the fetlock and the hoof.
- greater periwinkle — a Eurasian apocynaceous evergreen plant of the genus Vinca, V. major, having trailing stems and blue flowers
- greater pichiciego — an armadillo, Burmeisteria retusa, similar to, but larger than, a pichiciego
- grosse pointe park — a city in SE Michigan, near Detroit.
- grumbling appendix — a condition in which the appendix causes intermittent pain but appendicitis has not developed
- gum digger's spear — a long steel probe used by gum diggers digging for kauri gum
- half-open interval — a set of numbers between two given numbers but including only one endpoint.
- hamilton's problem — Hamiltonian problem
- harnessed antelope — any African antelope of the genus Tragelaphus, especially the bushbuck, having the body marked with white stripes and spots that resemble a harness, and, in the male, long, gently spiraling horns.
- hearing impairment — partial deafness
- helicopter station — a place where helicopters are kept in readiness for use
- hermaphrodite brig — a two-masted sailing vessel, square-rigged on the foremast and fore-and-aft-rigged on the mainmast.
- hexachlorobiphenyl — (organic compound) Either of forty-two isomers of the polychlorinated biphenyl containing six chlorine atoms.
- hexaphosphorylated — (biochemistry) phosphorylated with six units of phosphoric acid.
- hilary of poitiers — Saint, a.d. c300–368, French bishop and theologian.
- hippocratic facies — the sallow facial expression, with listless staring eyes, often regarded as denoting approaching death
- histomorphological — histology.
- historical present — the present tense used in narrating a past event as if happening at the time of narration.