0%

17-letter words containing a, s, f

  • overhead camshaft — a camshaft in an automotive engine that is located in the cylinder head over the engine block rather than in the block. Abbreviation: OHC.
  • overreach oneself — to fail because of trying to do more than one can
  • pacific northwest — the region of North America lying north of the Columbia River and west of the Rockies
  • pair of compasses — compass (def 7)
  • parts of kesteven — an area in E England constituting a former administrative division of Lincolnshire
  • passenger traffic — number of passengers
  • past life therapy — a form of hypnosis or meditation based on the belief that an individual's present problems are rooted in events that occurred before birth in this life
  • pate de foie gras — See under foie gras.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • play with oneself — a dramatic composition or piece; drama.
  • plug and feathers — an apparatus for splitting stone, consisting of two tapered bars (feathers) inserted into a hole drilled into the stone, between which a narrow wedge (plug) is hammered to spread them.
  • point of purchase — designating or in use at a retail outlet where an item can be purchased; point-of-sale: point-of-purchase displays to entice the buyer.
  • point-of-purchase — designating or in use at a retail outlet where an item can be purchased; point-of-sale: point-of-purchase displays to entice the buyer.
  • poison-arrow frog — a small, bright-colored terrestrial frog of the family Dendrobatidae, of Central and South American rain forests, that secretes a virulent poison from its skin, once used on the tips of Indian hunting arrows.
  • positive feedback — Electronics. the process of returning part of the output of a circuit, system, or device to the input, either to oppose the input (negative feedback) or to aid the input (positive feedback) acoustic feedback.
  • potassium sulfate — a crystalline, water-soluble solid, K 2 SO 4 , used chiefly in the manufacture of fertilizers, alums, and mineral water, and as a reagent in analytical chemistry.
  • pre-manifestation — an act of manifesting.
  • pre-modifications — an act or instance of modifying.
  • prefect apostolic — the administrator, usually below the rank of bishop, in charge of a prefecture apostolic.
  • preference shares — a share of preferred stock.
  • preferential shop — a shop in which union members are preferred, usually by agreement of an employer with a union.
  • procurator fiscal — In the Scottish legal system, the procurator fiscal is a public official who puts people on trial.
  • professional army — an army of trained soldiers
  • professional foul — In football, if a player commits a professional foul, they deliberately do something which is against the rules in order to prevent another player from scoring a goal.
  • proof of purchase — a document, such as a receipt, etc, that proves that you have purchased or bought something
  • proof-of-purchase — a sales slip, label, box top, or other item associated with a product that is presentable as evidence of actual purchase, as for claiming a refund or rebate.
  • purple of cassius — a purple pigment precipitated as a sol by the interaction of gold chloride and a solution of stannic acid and stannous chloride: used chiefly in the manufacture of ruby glass, ceramic glazes, and enamels.
  • pyrosulfuric acid — a strong, crystalline acid, H2S2O7, prepared commercially as a heavy, oily, fuming liquid: used in making explosives and dyes, as a sulfating agent, etc.
  • qualified success — If you describe something as a qualified success, you mean that it is only partly successful.
  • recursion formula — a formula for determining the next term of a sequence from one or more of the preceding terms.
  • refuse a proposal — If an insurer refuses a proposal, it does not agree to underwrite a risk proposed by a potential client.
  • rotation of crops — a system of rotating in a fixed order the kinds of crops, as grain or grass, grown in the same field, to maintain soil fertility
  • rough puff pastry — a rich flaky pastry made with butter and used for pie-crusts, flans, etc
  • rush-hour traffic — the large number of vehicles that move along roads, travelling to or from work at the beginning and end of the working day
  • russian wolfhound — borzoi.
  • sacrifice paddock — a grassed area allowed to be grazed completely, to be cultivated and resown later
  • sacrificial anode — Chemistry. an anode that is attached to a metal object subject to electrolysis and is decomposed instead of the object.
  • safety in numbers — If you say that there is safety in numbers, you mean that you are safer doing something if there are a lot of people doing it rather than doing it alone.
  • safety inspection — an inspection of a place carried out to ensure that it is safe and not dangerous
  • safety precaution — a precaution that is taken in order to ensure that something is safe and not dangerous
  • saint elmo's fire — corona discharge.
  • salt of the earth — an individual or group considered as representative of the best or noblest elements of society.
  • san andreas fault — an active strike-slip fault in W United States, extending from San Francisco to S California and forming the on-land portion of the western margin of the North American Plate.
  • san francisco bay — a bay in W California: the harbor of San Francisco; connected with the Pacific by the Golden Gate strait. 50 miles (80 km) long; 3–12 miles (5–19 km) wide.
  • sanitary landfill — landfill.
  • sawed-off shotgun — rifle with a short barrel
  • scarlet firethorn — a Eurasian evergreen, thorny shrub, Pyracantha coccinea, of the rose family, having white, hairy flower clusters and bright red berries.
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?