16-letter words containing f, a, l
- pass-band filter — band-pass filter
- pathetic fallacy — the endowment of nature, inanimate objects, etc., with human traits and feelings, as in the smiling skies; the angry sea.
- paulinus of nola — Saint. ?353–431 ad, Roman consul and Christian poet; bishop of Nola (409–431). Feast day: June 22
- pearls of wisdom — good advice, wise words
- pearly razorfish — See under razorfish.
- peregrine falcon — a globally distributed falcon, Falco peregrinus, much used in falconry because of its swift flight: several subspecies are endangered.
- perforated ulcer — an ulcer that bursts through the stomach wall and leaks food and gastric juices into the abdominal cavity
- permafrost table — the variable surface constituting the upper limit of permafrost. Compare frostline (def 2).
- personal effects — belongings
- persulfuric acid — Also called Caro's acid, permonosulfuric acid, peroxymonosulfuric acid, peroxysulfuric acid. a white, crystalline solid, H 2 SO 5 , used as an oxidizing agent for certain organic compounds.
- philip of swabia — 1180?–1208, king of Germany and uncrowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire 1198–1208 (son of Frederick I).
- physical fitness — good physical condition
- place of worship — religious house: church, temple
- placement office — an office in a university that offers students careers advice and help to find employment
- plaster of paris — calcined gypsum in white, powdery form, used as a base for gypsum plasters, as an additive of lime plasters, and as a material for making fine and ornamental casts: characterized by its ability to set rapidly when mixed with water.
- platform-balance — a scale with a platform for holding the items to be weighed.
- play off against — If you play people off against each other, you make them compete or argue, so that you gain some advantage.
- point of sailing — the bearing of a sailing vessel, considered with relation to the direction of the wind.
- polyvinyl formal — a colorless, water-insoluble, polyvinyl acetal produced from partially hydrolyzed polyvinyl acetate and formaldehyde, used chiefly in the manufacture of lacquers.
- powerpc platform — (architecture, standard) (PPCP, PReP - PowerPC Reference Platform, formerly CHRP - Common Hardware Reference Platform) An open system standard, designed by IBM, intended to ensure compatibility among PowerPC-based systems built by different companies. The PReP standard specifies the PCI bus, but will also support ISA, MicroChannel and PCMCIA. PReP-compliant systems will be able to run the Macintosh OS, OS/2, WorkplaceOS, AIX, Solaris, Taligent and Windows NT. IBM systems will (of course) be PReP-compliant. Apple's first PowerPC Macintoshes will not be compliant, but future ones may be.
- practical effect — Usually, practical effects. a special effect that is created live on the set of a film, using real-world objects.
- pressure flaking — a method of manufacturing a flint tool by pressing flakes from a stone core with a pointed implement, usually of wood tipped with antler or copper.
- pribilof islands — a group of islands in the Bering Sea, off SW Alaska, belonging to the US: the breeding ground of the northern fur seal. Area: about 168 sq km (65 sq miles)
- principal rafter — a diagonal member of a roof principal, usually forming part of a truss and supporting the purlins on which the common rafters rest.
- professionalisms — professional character, spirit, or methods.
- puddling-furnace — the act of a person or thing that puddles.
- pull a long face — to look sad, glum, disapproving, etc.
- quarter-finalist — A quarter-finalist is a person or team that is competing in a quarter-final.
- quick as a flash — If you say that someone reacts to something quick as a flash, you mean that they react to it extremely quickly.
- quinquefoliolate — (botany) Having five leaflets.
- racial profiling — the use of personal characteristics or behavior patterns to make generalizations about a person, as in gender profiling.
- ramen profitable — If a startup business is ramen profitable, it is barely profitable, just enough to allow the founder to live on the cheapest diet.
- rape of the lock — a mock-epic poem (1712) by Alexander Pope.
- raspberry sawfly — a black sawfly, Monophadnoides geniculatus, the larvae of which feed on the leaves of the raspberry and blackberry.
- rational fortran — (language) (RATFOR) Brian Kernighan's Fortran preprocessor that allows programming with C-like control flow. RATFOR is mainly of historical significance. A translator from Ratfor to Fortran IV was posted to comp.sources.Unix volume 13.
- rattlesnake fern — any of several American grape ferns, especially Botrychium virginianium, having clusters of sporangia resembling the rattles of a rattlesnake.
- rattlesnake flag — any of a number of U.S. flags that bear a picture of a rattlesnake and the motto “Don't Tread on Me,” especially those used during the French and Indian War and the American Revolution.
- reclassification — categorization in a different way
- red-flannel hash — hash made of ground corned beef, potatoes, and beets
- reflection plane — a plane through a crystal that divides the crystal into two halves that are mirror images of each other.
- reflexive domain — A domain satisfying a recursive domain equation. E.g. D = D -> D.
- refracting angle — an angle formed by a ray which is refracted and which is perpendicular to the refracting surface
- releasing factor — a substance usually of hypothalamic origin that triggers the release of a particular hormone from an endocrine gland.
- root normal form — (RNF) Head Normal Form in graph rewriting.
- rule of the road — any of the regulations concerning the safe handling of vessels under way with respect to one another, imposed by a government on ships in its own waters or upon its own ships on the high seas.
- sacrificial lamb — If you refer to someone as a sacrificial lamb, you mean that they have been blamed unfairly for something they did not do, usually in order to protect another more powerful person or group.
- safeguard clause — a clause in a contract, etc, that ensures the protection of something against problems, etc
- sales conference — meeting of salespeople
- sapodilla family — the plant family Sapotaceae, characterized by chiefly tropical trees and shrubs having milky juice, simple leaves, small flowers, and fruit in the form of a berry, and including the buckthorn (genus Bumelia), sapodilla, star apple, and trees that are the source of gutta-percha and balata.
- saxifrage family — the plant family Saxifragaceae, characterized by herbaceous plants, shrubs, and small trees having alternate or opposite leaves, clustered or solitary flowers, and fruit in the form of a berry or capsule, and including the astilbe, currant, deutzia, gooseberry, hydrangea, mock orange, piggy-back plant, saxifrage, and strawberry geranium.