16-letter words containing f, a, i
- knights of labor — a secret workingmen's organization formed in 1869 to defend the interests of labor.
- knights of malta — the order of Hospitalers.
- kondratieff wave — a long business cycle of economic expansion and contraction, postulated to last about 60 years.
- larger than life — If you say that someone or something is larger than life, you mean that they appear or behave in a way that seems more exaggerated or important than usual.
- larger-than-life — exceedingly imposing, impressive, or memorable, especially in appearance or forcefulness: a larger-than-life leader.
- larsen ice shelf — an ice barrier in Antarctica, in the NW Weddell Sea, on the E coast of the Antarctic Peninsula: first explored 1893.
- law of parsimony — a principle according to which an explanation of a thing or event is made with the fewest possible assumptions.
- leaf-cutting ant — any of several tropical American ants of the genus Atta that cut and chew bits of leaves and flowers into a mash that they use to cultivate a fungus garden.
- leaf-cutting bee — any of the bees of the family Megachilidae that cut circular pieces from leaves or flowers to line their nests.
- left parenthesis — (character) "(". ASCII character 40. Common names: left paren; left parenthesis; left; open; paren (")" = thesis); open paren; open parenthesis; left parenthesis; left banana. Rare: so (")" = already); lparen; ITU-T: opening parenthesis; open round bracket, left round bracket, INTERCAL: wax (")" = wane); parenthisey (")" = unparenthisey); left ear. Paired with right parenthesis (")").
- letter of advice — a notification from a consignor to a consignee giving specific information as to a shipment, the name of the carrier, the date shipped, etc.
- life after death — If you talk about life after death, you are discussing the possibility that people may continue to exist in some form after they die.
- life-threatening — endangering life: a life-threatening illness.
- lignin sulfonate — a brown powder consisting of a sulfonate salt made from waste liquor of the sulfate pulping process of soft wood: used in concrete, leather tanning, as an additive in oil-well drilling mud, and as a source of vanillin.
- line of latitude — an imaginary line on a globe, map, etc, indicating latitude
- lissajous figure — the series of plane curves traced by an object executing two mutually perpendicular harmonic motions.
- littoral warfare — military combat conducted in coastal areas.
- louisiana french — French as spoken in Louisiana; Cajun. Abbreviation: LaF.
- lower california — Baja California.
- magnifying glass — a lens that produces an enlarged image of an object.
- mahmud of ghazni — a.d. 971?–1030, Muslim Amir of Ghazni 997–1030.
- maid of all work — a maid who does all types of housework
- maintenance-free — requiring little or no maintenance: a maintenance-free swimming pool.
- make a day of it — to cause an activity to last a day
- make a pitch for — to give verbal support to
- make a virtue of — If you make a virtue of something, you pretend that you did it because you chose to, although in fact you did it because you had to.
- make an issue of — If you make an issue of something, you try to make other people think about it or discuss it, because you are concerned or annoyed about it.
- mallowpuff māori — a Māori who is considered to behave like a white person
- managerial staff — staff in positions of management
- manifest destiny — the belief or doctrine, held chiefly in the middle and latter part of the 19th century, that it was the destiny of the U.S. to expand its territory over the whole of North America and to extend and enhance its political, social, and economic influences.
- margin of safety — therapeutic index.
- marsh cinquefoil — a variety of cinquefoil, Potentilla palustris, that grows in marshy areas
- matthew flinders — Matthew, 1774–1814, English navigator and explorer: surveyed coast of Australia.
- matthew of paris — c1200–59, English chronicler.
- mayfield heights — a city in N Ohio, near Cleveland.
- mental defective — a person who suffers from a learning disability or from some form of mental illness
- mexican fruitfly — a brightly colored fly, Anastrepha ludens, whose larvae are a serious pest chiefly of citrus fruits and mangoes in Mexico, Central America, and southern Texas.
- mexican standoff — a stalemate or impasse; a confrontation that neither side can win.
- micro-microfarad — picofarad. Symbol: μμF.
- microfilm reader — a machine that displays on a screen a magnified image of a microfilm
- microsoft access — 1. (database) A relational database running under Microsoft Windows. Data is stored as a number of "tables", e.g. "Stock". Each table consists of a number of "records" (e.g. for different items) and each record contains a number of "fields", e.g. "Product code", "Supplier", "Quantity in stock". Access allows the user to create "forms" and "reports". A form shows one record in a user-designed format and allows the user to step through records one at a time. A report shows selected records in a user-designed format, possibly grouped into sections with different kinds of total (including sum, minimum, maximum, average). There are also facilities to use links ("joins") between tables which share a common field and to filter records according to certain criteria or search for particular field values. Version: 2 (date?). 2. (communications) A communications program from Microsoft, meant to compete with ProComm and other programs. It sucked and was dropped. Years later they reused the name for their database.
- milk of magnesia — a milky white suspension in water of magnesium hydroxide, Mg (OH) 2 , used as an antacid or laxative.
- minerva software — A company producing software for the Acorn Archimedes.
- miraculous fruit — miracle fruit.
- misconfiguration — An incorrect or inappropriate configuration.
- misspecification — An incorrect specification.
- modacrylic fiber — any of various synthetic copolymer textile fibers, as Dynel, containing less than 85 percent but more than 35 percent of acrylonitrile.
- modified-release — denoting a formulation of a medicinal drug taken orally that releases the active ingredients over several hours, in order to maintain a relatively constant plasma concentration of the drug
- multifariousness — (uncountable) The characteristic of being multifarious.
- multilinear form — a function or functional of several variables such that when all variables but one are held fixed, the function is linear in the remaining variable.