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21-letter words containing f, e, a, r, l

  • law of thermodynamics — any of three principles variously stated in equivalent forms, being the principle that the change of energy of a thermodynamic system is equal to the heat transferred minus the work done (first law of thermodynamics) the principle that no cyclic process is possible in which heat is absorbed from a reservoir at a single temperature and converted completely into mechanical work (second law of thermodynamics) and the principle that it is impossible to reduce the temperature of a system to absolute zero in a finite number of operations (third law of thermodynamics)
  • league of arab states — Arab League.
  • leaning tower of pisa — a round, marble campanile in Pisa, Italy, begun in 1174 and now 17 feet (5.2 meters) out of the perpendicular in its height of 179 feet (54 meters).
  • learning difficulties — difficulty experienced in reaching the average standard of people of the same age group as regards intellectual and cognitive skills and performance
  • lender of last resort — the central bank of a country with authority for controlling its banking system
  • like a blue-arsed fly — in a state of frenzied activity
  • linear transformation — linear map
  • liquefied natural gas — a mixture of various gases, esp methane, liquefied under pressure for transportation and used as an engine fuel
  • lotus-of-the-true-law — a Mahayana sutra, forming with its references to Amida and the Bodhisattvas the basis for the doctrine that there is something of Buddha in everyone, so that salvation is universally available: a central text of Mahayana Buddhism.
  • magnetocaloric effect — an increase or decrease of the temperature of a thermally isolated magnetic substance accompanying an increase or decrease in the intensity of a magnetic field.
  • magnificent riflebird — a bird of paradise, Craspedophora magnifica
  • make up for lost time — compensate for past inaction
  • make yourself at home — settle in
  • mother-of-pearl cloud — nacreous cloud.
  • mother-of-pearl glass — an American art glassware having colored glass set into indentations in a thickness of opaque glass, the whole covered with clear glass and etched slightly with acid.
  • nellis air force base — the largest air base in the U.S. Air Force's Tactical Air Command, located near Las Vegas, Nev., and developed from what began in 1941 as a U.S. Army Air Corps field.
  • nightmare file system — Pejorative hackerism for Sun's Network File System (NFS). In any nontrivial network of Suns where there is a lot of NFS cross-mounting, when one Sun goes down, the others often freeze up. Some machine tries to access the down one, and (getting no response) repeats indefinitely. This causes it to appear dead to some messages (what is actually happening is that it is locked up in what should have been a brief excursion to a higher spl level). Then another machine tries to reach either the down machine or the pseudo-down machine, and itself becomes pseudo-down. The first machine to discover the down one is now trying both to access the down one and to respond to the pseudo-down one, so it is even harder to reach. This situation snowballs very quickly, and soon the entire network of machines is frozen - worst of all, the user can't even abort the file access that started the problem! Many of NFS's problems are excused by partisans as being an inevitable result of its statelessness, which is held to be a great feature (critics, of course, call it a great misfeature). ITS partisans are apt to cite this as proof of Unix's alleged bogosity; ITS had a working NFS-like shared file system with none of these problems in the early 1970s. See also broadcast storm.
  • open telecom platform — (communications, library)   (OTP) A set of standard, open source libraries and tools for use with Erlang.
  • operational amplifier — a high-gain, high-input impedance amplifier, usually an integrated circuit, that can perform mathematical operations when suitably wired.
  • partial reinforcement — the process of randomly rewarding an organism for making a response on only some of the occasions it makes it
  • pellitory-of-the-wall — an urticaceous plant, P. diffusa, of the S and W European genus Parietaria, which grows in crevices and has long narrow leaves and small pink flowers
  • performance appraisal — the assessment, at regular intervals, of an employee's performance at work
  • peroxydisulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 2).
  • piero della francesca — Piero della [pee-air-oh del-uh;; Italian pye-raw del-lah] /piˈɛər oʊ ˈdɛl ə;; Italian ˈpyɛ rɔ ˈdɛl lɑ/ (Show IPA), (Piero dei Franceschi) c1420–92, Italian painter.
  • place of articulation — the location at which two speech organs approach or come together in producing a speech sound, as in the contact of the tongue and the teeth to form a dental sound. Also called point of articulation. Compare articulator (def 2).
  • place of safety order — (in Britain) under the Children and Young Persons Act 1969, an order granted by a justice to a person or agency granting authority to detain a child or young person and take him or her to a place of safety for not more than 28 days, because of the child's actual or likely ill-treatment or neglect, etc
  • professional services — (job)   A department of a supplier providing consultancy and programming manpower for the supplier's products.
  • psychological warfare — the use of propaganda, threats, and other psychological techniques to mislead, intimidate, demoralize, or otherwise influence the thinking or behavior of an opponent.
  • reconnaissance flight — a flight made by an aircraft in order to obtain military information about a particular place
  • referential integrity — (database)   A collection of properties which should be possessed by data in a relational database. For example, in a database of family members, if we enter A as a spouse of B, we should also enter B as a spouse of A. Similarly, if we remove one end of the relationship we should also remove the other.
  • scarlet monkey flower — any of various plants belonging to the genus Mimulus, of the figwort family, as M. cardinalis (scarlet monkey flower) having spotted flowers that resemble a face.
  • self-characterization — portrayal; description: the actor's characterization of a politician.
  • semantic differential — a technique for measuring the connotative meaning of concepts by having an individual rate each concept on a series of graduated scales, each scale defined by a pair of polar adjectives, as good–bad or strong–weak.
  • silicon tetrafluoride — a colorless, fuming gas, SiF 4 , used chiefly in the manufacture of fluosilicic acid.
  • single parent benefit — a form of government funded financial assistance paid to single parents
  • sovereign wealth fund — an investment fund created using the financial assets of a national government
  • split-finger fastball — a type of fastball that sinks abruptly as it nears home plate, thrown with the grip used for a forkball
  • split-screen facility — a facility allowing different scenes to be shown on screen at the same time
  • statistical inference — the theory, methods, and practice of forming judgments about the parameters of a population, usually on the basis of random sampling
  • steer clear of sb/sth — If you steer clear of someone or something, you deliberately avoid them.
  • stem-and-leaf diagram — a histogram in which the data points falling within each class interval are listed in order
  • supplementary benefit — (formerly) an extra amount of money that is paid to someone by the government, in addition to their normal income. Replaced by income support in 1988
  • surface of revolution — a surface formed by revolving a plane curve about a given line.
  • tetrabromofluorescein — eosin (def 1).
  • the apple of your eye — If you say that someone is the apple of your eye, you mean that they are very important to you and you are extremely fond of them.
  • the barber of seville — Italian Il barbiere di Siviglia. a comic opera (1816) by Gioacchino Rossini based on a comedy (1775) by Beaumarchais.
  • the battle of britain — from August to October 1940, the prolonged bombing of S England by the German Luftwaffe and the successful resistance by the RAF Fighter Command, which put an end to the German plan of invading Britain
  • the fall of the cards — the chance distribution of cards in a given deal
  • the flickertail state — a name for the state of North Dakota
  • the letter of the law — If you say that someone keeps to the letter of the law , you mean that they act according to what is actually written in the law, rather than according to the general principles of it, especially when you disapprove of this.
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