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25-letter words containing f, a, i, r, n, t

  • franked investment income — (formerly) dividends from one UK company received by another on which the paying company had paid corporation tax so that the receiving company had no corporation tax to pay: discontinued from 1999
  • free central placentation — a type of placenta structure in an ovary, in which the ovules cluster freely around a columnlike central placenta which is attached at the base of the ovary
  • frequently asked question — (convention)   (FAQ, or rarely FAQL, FAQ list) A document provided for many Usenet newsgroups (and, more recently, web services) which attempts to answer questions which new readers often ask. These are maintained by volunteers and posted regularly to the newsgroup. You should always consult the FAQ list for a group before posting to it in case your question or point is common knowledge. The collection of all FAQ lists is one of the most precious and remarkable resources on the Internet. It contains a huge wealth of up-to-date expert knowledge on many subjects of common interest. Accuracy of the information is greatly assisted by its frequent exposure to criticism by an interested, and occasionally well-informed, audience (the readers of the relevant newsgroup). The main FTP archive for FAQs is on a computer called RTFM at MIT, where they can be accessed either by group or by hierarchy. There is another archive at Imperial College, London, UK and a web archive in Ohio, USA. The FAQs are also posted to Usenet newsgroups: news:comp.answers, news:news.answers and news:alt.answers.
  • functional representation — representation in a governing body on the basis of social class or occupation.
  • further education college — (in Britain) an establishment that offers formal education beyond school and which is not a university or polytechnic
  • gabriel daniel fahrenheit — Gabriel Daniel [German gah-bree-el dah-nee-el] /German ˈgɑ briˌɛl ˈdɑ niˌɛl/ (Show IPA), 1686–1736, German physicist: devised a temperature scale and introduced the use of mercury in thermometers.
  • gas desulfurization plant — A gas desulfurization plant is a place with equipment that removes sulfur dioxide from flue gas before it is released into the atmosphere.
  • general accounting office — an independent auditing and accounting agency that assists Congress and government departments and agencies and settles claims for the federal government. Abbreviation: GAO.
  • gensym standard interface — (programming)   (GSI) A set of C libraries and programming tools used to interface G2 to external systems. Commercially available bridges are available to SCADA systems and PLCs.
  • go through fire and water — to undergo great difficulties or dangers
  • graphic display interface — (hardware)   (GDI) graphics adaptor.
  • graphics interface format — (spelling)   You mean "Graphics Interchange Format".
  • greatest-integer function — the function that assigns to each real number the greatest integer less than or equal to the number. Symbol: [ x ].
  • hailsham of st marylebone — Baron, title of Quintin (McGarel) Hogg (ˈkwɪntɪn). 1907–2001, British Conservative politician; Lord Chancellor (1970–74; 1979–87). He renounced his viscountcy in 1963 when he made an unsuccessful bid for the Conservative Party leadership; he became a life peer in 1970
  • hardening of the arteries — medical condition: arteriosclerosis
  • have an eye for something — If you say that someone has an eye for something, you mean that they are good at noticing it or making judgments about it.
  • have bats in one's belfry — any of numerous flying mammals of the order Chiroptera, of worldwide distribution in tropical and temperate regions, having modified forelimbs that serve as wings and are covered with a membranous skin extending to the hind limbs.
  • high voltage differential — (hardware)   (HVD) Differential SCSI scheme that has been in use for years. The terminators run on 5 Volts DC. See also LVD.
  • homothetic transformation — similarity transformation (def 1).
  • homothetic-transformation — Also called homothetic transformation. a mapping of a set by which each element in the set is mapped into a positive constant multiple of itself, the same constant being used for all elements.
  • human-factors engineering — an applied science that coordinates the design of devices, systems, and physical working conditions with the capacities and requirements of the worker.
  • in (or out of) character — consistent with (or inconsistent with) the role or general character
  • in (or out of) mothballs — put into (or taken from) a condition of being stored or in reserve
  • in the foreseeable future — If you say that something will happen in the foreseeable future you mean that you think it will happen fairly soon.
  • industrial injury benefit — money paid to an employee who has been injured or who has developed a disease because of their job, and who is consequently unable to work
  • industrial life insurance — life insurance having a relatively low face value in which premiums are paid weekly or monthly to an agent.
  • infantry fighting vehicle — a heavily armored combat vehicle, as a tank, used to carry infantry into battle and provide support. Abbreviation: IFV.
  • infrared data association — (standard, body)   (IrDA) A non-profit trade association providing standards to ensure the quality and interoperability of infrared (IR) hardware. The association currently has a membership of over 160 companies from around the world, representing computer and telecommunications hardware, software, components and adapters. IrDA typically uses direct infrared i.e. point-to-point, line-of-sight, one-to-one communications. The standards include: IrDA Data (SIR, FIR, VFIR), IrDA Control, and AIR. Ports built to the above standards can be found in products such as PDAs, Palm devices, printers, desktop adapters, notebooks, and digital cameras.
  • internal field separators — (operating system)   ($IFS) A predefined environment variable in the Unix Bourne shell whose default value is the three-character string containing space, tab and line feed. Any string of one or more of these characters separates the command and each of its arguments in a command line. $IFS also tells the shell's built-in read command where to split an input line when reading into multiple variables. E.g. setting IFS=: would be appropriate for reading a file with ':'-separated fields, such as /etc/passwd.
  • leaf distribution limited — A UK connectivity software supplier which also provides SERVELAN, a country-wide Internet access service. E-mail: <[email protected]>. Address: 7 Elmwood, Chineham Business Park, Crockford Lane, BASINGSTOKE RG24 0WG. Telephone: +44 (1256) 707 777. Fax: +44 (1256) 707 555.
  • letters of administration — a formal document nominating a specified person to take over, administer, and dispose of an estate when there is no executor to carry out the testator's will
  • limited-slip differential — an automotive differential that can transfer power from a wheel that has lost traction to one that has not.
  • maintenance of membership — an arrangement or agreement between an employer and a labor union by which employees who are members of the union at the time the agreement is made, or who subsequently join, must either remain members until the agreement expires, or be discharged.
  • massacre of the innocents — the slaughter of all the young male children of Bethlehem at Herod's command in an attempt to destroy Jesus (Matthew 2:16–18)
  • memorandum of association — a document giving details such as the company's name, the purpose of the company, and the address of its registered office that is legally required when incorporating a company in certain countries such as the UK
  • message passing interface — (communications, protocol)   A de facto standard for communication among the nodes running a parallel program on a distributed memory system. MPI is a library of routines that can be called from Fortran and C programs. MPI's advantage over older message passing libraries is that it is both portable (because MPI has been implemented for almost every distributed memory architecture) and fast (because each implementation is optimised for the hardware it runs on).
  • metal-free phthalocyanine — phthalocyanine (def 1).
  • minimal brain dysfunction — (no longer in technical use) attention deficit disorder.
  • my favourite toy language — (jargon, language)   (MFTL) Describes a talk on a programming language design that is heavy on syntax (with lots of BNF), sometimes even talks about semantics (e.g. type systems), but rarely, if ever, has any content (see content-free). More broadly applied to talks - even when the topic is not a programming language --- in which the subject matter is gone into in unnecessary and meticulous detail at the sacrifice of any conceptual content. "Well, it was a typical MFTL talk". 2. A language about which the developers are passionate (often to the point of prosyletic zeal) but no one else cares about. Applied to the language by those outside the originating group. "He cornered me about type resolution in his MFTL." The first great goal in the mind of the designer of an MFTL is usually to write a compiler for it, then bootstrap the design away from contamination by lesser languages by writing a compiler for it in itself. Thus, the standard put-down question at an MFTL talk is "Has it been used for anything besides its own compiler?". On the other hand, a language that *cannot* be used to write its own compiler is beneath contempt. See break-even point, toolsmith.
  • national liberation front — the name taken by nationalist insurgent groups in various countries.
  • northern corn-leaf blight — northern leaf blight.
  • not for the faint-hearted — If you say that something is not for the faint-hearted, you mean that it is an extreme or very unusual example of its kind, and is not suitable for people who like only safe and familiar things.
  • nuffield teaching project — (in Britain) a complete school programme in mathematics, science, languages, etc, with suggested complementary theory and practical work
  • office of war information — OWI.
  • on the horns of a dilemma — one of the bony, permanent, hollow paired growths, often curved and pointed, that project from the upper part of the head of certain ungulate mammals, as cattle, sheep, goats, or antelopes.
  • pci configuration utility — (tool)   (PCU) A piece of software for configuring a specific PCI hardware device.
  • personal flotation device — a life preserver, life jacket, or other device for keeping a person afloat in the water. Abbreviation: PFD.
  • point-and-drool interface — (abuse)   (Or "point-and-grunt interface") A parody of "point-and-shoot interface", describing a windows, icons, and mouse-based (WIMP) graphical user interface. The implication, of course, is that such an interface is only suitable for idiots. See for the rest of us, WIMP, drool-proof paper.
  • point-and-grunt interface — point-and-drool interface
  • principle of least action — the principle that motion between any two points in a conservative dynamical system is such that the action has a minimum value with respect to all paths between the points that correspond to the same energy
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