0%

17-letter words containing a, t, f

  • orange free state — a province in central Republic of South Africa: a Boer republic 1854–1900; a British colony (Orange River Colony, ) 1900–10. 49,647 sq. mi. (128,586 sq. km). Capital: Bloemfontein.
  • organized ferment — ferment (def 1).
  • out of all reason — unreasonable
  • out of harm's way — If someone or something is out of harm's way, they are in a safe place away from danger or from the possibility of being damaged.
  • out of one's head — the upper part of the body in humans, joined to the trunk by the neck, containing the brain, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
  • 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.
  • pacific northwest — the region of North America lying north of the Columbia River and west of the Rockies
  • pacific tree frog — a common terrestrial frog, Hyla regilla, of western North America, having a dark stripe along each side of the head.
  • 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.
  • paratyphoid fever — Also called paratyphoid fever. an infectious disease, similar in some of its symptoms to typhoid fever but usually milder, caused by any of several bacilli of the genus Salmonella other than S. typhi.
  • 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.
  • peacock butterfly — a European nymphalid butterfly, Inachis io, having reddish-brown wings each marked with a purple eyespot
  • peer of the realm — any of a class of peers in Great Britain and Ireland entitled by heredity to sit in the House of Lords.
  • perforation gauge — a marked ruler used to measure the number of perforations per unit length along the borders of a stamp.
  • petrol filler cap — a small cover that goes over the hole in a vehicle into which you put petrol
  • 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.
  • photofluorography — photography of images produced by a fluoroscopic examination, used in x-ray examination of the lungs of large groups of people.
  • 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.
  • polarizing filter — a camera lens filter used to control the plane of polarization of light entering the lens.
  • political refugee — a person who has fled from a homeland because of political persecution.
  • port orford cedar — a tall tree, Chamaecyparis lawsoniana, of coastal Oregon, having flattened, scalelike foliage and wood highly valued as timber.
  • portfolio manager — a person employed by others to make investments for them
  • 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.
  • potato leafhopper — any of various leafhoppers that are serious pests, damaging a wide variety of cultivated and wild plants, especially potatoes.
  • power of attorney — a written document given by one person or party to another authorizing the latter to act for the former.
  • pre-configuration — the relative disposition or arrangement of the parts or elements of a thing.
  • pre-manifestation — an act of manifesting.
  • pre-modifications — an act or instance of modifying.
  • pre-qualification — a quality, accomplishment, etc., that fits a person for some function, office, or the like.
  • prefect apostolic — the administrator, usually below the rank of bishop, in charge of a prefecture apostolic.
  • preferential shop — a shop in which union members are preferred, usually by agreement of an employer with a union.
  • probation officer — an officer who investigates and reports on the conduct of offenders who are free on probation.
  • procurator fiscal — In the Scottish legal system, the procurator fiscal is a public official who puts people on trial.
  • proportional font — a font type in which the width of letters and symbols varies depending on the letter or symbol
  • protection factor — a figure representing the relative degree of protection from the sun's rays afforded by a particular sunscreen
  • protective tariff — a tariff levied on imports to protect the domestic economy rather than to raise revenue
  • put in a word for — to make favourable mention of (someone); recommend
  • quadratic formula — the formula for determining theroots of a quadratic equation from its coefficients: .
  • rational function — a function that can be written as the quotient of two polynomials with integral coefficients.
  • 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
  • reflection nebula — a cloud of interstellar gas and dust that reflects the light of neighboring stars.
  • refractory period — a short period after a nerve or muscle cell fires during which the cell cannot respond to additional stimulation.
  • repeating firearm — a firearm capable of discharging a number of shots without reloading.
Was this page helpful?
Yes No
Thank you for your feedback! Tell your friends about this page
Tell us why?