18-letter words containing a, r, n, o
- farewell-to-spring — a slender, showy plant, Clarkia amoena, of the evening primrose family, native to western North America, having satiny, cup-shaped, lilac-crimson or reddish-pink flowers and roundish fruit.
- farm the long acre — to graze cows on the verge of a road
- fast-food industry — the industry surrounding fast-food restaurants
- fatty degeneration — deterioration of the cells of the body, accompanied by the formation of fat globules within the diseased cells.
- feather one's nest — one of the horny structures forming the principal covering of birds, consisting typically of a hard, tubular portion attached to the body and tapering into a thinner, stemlike portion bearing a series of slender, barbed processes that interlock to form a flat structure on each side.
- federal government — pertaining to or of the nature of a union of states under a central government distinct from the individual governments of the separate states, as in federal government; federal system.
- feldenkrais method — a system of gentle movements that promote flexibility, coordination, and self-awareness
- fettuccine alfredo — fettuccine in cream sauce with grated Parmesan cheese.
- fibrocartilaginous — a type of cartilage having a large number of fibers.
- fifth monarchy men — (during the Commonwealth in the 17th century) a militant sect of Puritans who identified the fifth monarchy with the millennial reign of Christ and who believed they should help to inaugurate that reign by force.
- fire and brimstone — When people talk about fire and brimstone, they are referring to hell and how they think people are punished there after death.
- fire-and-brimstone — threatening punishment in the hereafter: a fire-and-brimstone sermon.
- first and foremost — primarily
- fischer von erlach — Johann Bernhard [yaw-hahn bern-hahrt] /ˈyɔ hɑn ˈbɛrn hɑrt/ (Show IPA), 1656–1723, Austrian architect.
- fissure of rolando — central sulcus.
- floating partition — a partition running parallel to and between two joists and resting on blocking between them.
- floating underflow — underflow
- floating-rate note — a eurobond, often issued as a negotiable bearer bond, that has a floating rate of interest
- flower arrangement — floral display
- for good (and all) — for always; finally; permanently
- for heaven's sake! — a mild exclamation of surprise, annoyance, etc.
- 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.
- foreign-trade zone — free port (def 1).
- forgive and forget — be reconciled
- formal equivalence — the relation that holds between two open sentences when their universal closures are materially equivalent
- forwarding address — address for mail to be sent on
- foundation garment — an undergarment, as a girdle or corset, worn by women to support or give shape to the contours of the body.
- fourth commandment — “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy”: fourth of the Ten Commandments.
- fourth normal form — database normalisation
- fracture toughness — The fracture toughness of a material is how likely it is to resist fracture.
- fragile x syndrome — a widespread form of mental retardation caused by a faulty gene on the X chromosome.
- fragile-x syndrome — an inherited condition characterized by learning disability: affected individuals have an X-chromosome that is easily damaged under certain conditions
- fragmentation bomb — a bomb designed to break into many small, high-velocity fragments when detonated.
- frame of reference — a structure of concepts, values, customs, views, etc., by means of which an individual or group perceives or evaluates data, communicates ideas, and regulates behavior.
- francisco coronado — Francisco Vásquez de [frahn-thees-kaw bahs-keth th e,, frahn-sees-kaw bahs-kes] /frɑnˈθis kɔ ˈbɑs kɛθ ðɛ,, frɑnˈsis kɔ ˈbɑs kɛs/ (Show IPA), 1510–54? Spanish explorer in North America.
- free-range poultry — poultry kept in natural nonintensive conditions
- fringe-toed lizard — an iguanid lizard, Uma notata, of sandy deserts of the western U.S. and Mexico, having a wedge-shaped snout and toes fringed with long, pointed scales.
- from hand to mouth — the terminal, prehensile part of the upper limb in humans and other primates, consisting of the wrist, metacarpal area, fingers, and thumb.
- front organization — business: cover-up
- 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
- gabriele dannunzio — Gabriele [Italian gah-bree-e-le] /Italian ˌgɑ briˈɛ lɛ/ (Show IPA), (Duca Minimo) 1863–1938, Italian soldier, novelist, and poet.
- galvanic corrosion — Galvanic corrosion is a type of corrosion caused by bringing together two different metals, one of which corrodes more rapidly than it would alone while the other corrodes less rapidly.
- gamblers anonymous — an organization that holds group meetings to help people who are addicted to gambling
- gamma distribution — a continuous two-parameter distribution from which the chi-square and exponential distributions are derived, written Gamma (α. β), where α and β are greater than zero, and defined in terms of the gamma function
- garbage collection — (programming) (GC) The process by which dynamically allocated storage is reclaimed during the execution of a program. The term usually refers to automatic periodic storage reclamation by the garbage collector (part of the run-time system), as opposed to explicit code to free specific blocks of memory. Automatic garbage collection is usually triggered during memory allocation when the amount free memory falls below some threshold or after a certain number of allocations. Normal execution is suspended and the garbage collector is run. There are many variations on this basic scheme. Languages like Lisp represent expressions as graphs built from cells which contain pointers and data. These languages use automatic dynamic storage allocation to build expressions. During the evaluation of an expression it is necessary to reclaim space which is used by subexpressions but which is no longer pointed to by anything. This reclaimed memory is returned to the free memory pool for subsequent reallocation. Without garbage collection the program's memory requirements would increase monotonically throughout execution, possibly exceeding system limits on virtual memory size. The three main methods are mark-sweep garbage collection, reference counting and copying garbage collection. See also the AI koan about garbage collection.
- garden loosestrife — any of various plants belonging to the genus Lysimachia, of the primrose family, having clusters of usually yellow flowers, as L. vulgaris (garden loosestrife) or L. quadrifolia (whorled loosestrife)