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17-letter words containing f, e, d, o, r

  • dress-down friday — In some companies employees are allowed to wear clothes that are less smart than usual on a Friday. This day is known as a dress-down Friday.
  • drool-proof paper — (jargon)   Documentation that has been obsessively dumbed down, to the point where only a cretin could bear to read it, is said to have succumbed to the "drool-proof paper syndrome" or to have been "written on drool-proof paper". For example, this is an actual quote from Apple Computer's LaserWriter manual: "Do not expose your LaserWriter to open fire or flame."
  • drop on the floor — To react to an error condition by silently discarding messages or other valuable data. "The gateway ran out of memory, so it just started dropping packets on the floor." Also frequently used of faulty mail and netnews relay sites that lose messages. See also black hole, bit bucket.
  • droplet infection — infection spread by airborne droplets of secretions from the nose, throat, or lungs.
  • due course of law — the regular administration of the law, according to which no citizen may be denied his or her legal rights and all laws must conform to fundamental, accepted legal principles, as the right of the accused to confront his or her accusers.
  • ends of the earth — remote regions
  • enforcement order — an order by a court to force a person or organization to comply with a regulation or law
  • error of judgment — a wrong or bad decision
  • fade in (or out) — to appear or cause to appear (or disappear) gradually; make or become more (or less) distinct
  • fairness doctrine — a policy mandated by the Federal Communications Commission, requiring radio and television stations to grant equal time to a political candidate, group, etc., to present an opposing viewpoint to one already aired.
  • fall on deaf ears — the organ of hearing and equilibrium in vertebrates, in humans consisting of an external ear that gathers sound vibrations, a middle ear in which the vibrations resonate against the tympanic membrane, and a fluid-filled internal ear that maintains balance and that conducts the tympanic vibrations to the auditory nerve, which transmits them as impulses to the brain.
  • fear and loathing — (Hunter S. Thompson) A state inspired by the prospect of dealing with certain real-world systems and standards that are totally brain-damaged but ubiquitous - Intel 8086s, COBOL, EBCDIC, or any IBM machine except the Rios (also known as the RS/6000).
  • fendalton tractor — a four-wheel drive recreational vehicle
  • field sales force — a team of people selling a product or service in the field as opposed to over the telephone, etc
  • firehose syndrome — (networking, jargon)   An absence, failure or inadequacy of flow control mechanisms causing the sender to overwhelm the receiver. The implication is that, like trying to drink from a firehose, the consequenses are worse than just loss of data, e.g. the receiver may crash. See ping-flood.
  • first commandment — “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”: first of the Ten Commandments.
  • first-order logic — (language, logic)   The language describing the truth of mathematical formulas. Formulas describe properties of terms and have a truth value. The following are atomic formulas: True False p(t1,..tn) where t1,..,tn are terms and p is a predicate. If F1, F2 and F3 are formulas and v is a variable then the following are compound formulas: The "order" of a logic specifies what entities "For all" and "Exists" may quantify over. First-order logic can only quantify over sets of atomic propositions. (E.g. For all p . p => p). Second-order logic can quantify over functions on propositions, and higher-order logic can quantify over any type of entity. The sets over which quantifiers operate are usually implicit but can be deduced from well-formedness constraints. In first-order logic quantifiers always range over ALL the elements of the domain of discourse. By contrast, second-order logic allows one to quantify over subsets.
  • five-spice powder — a mixture of spices used especially in Chinese cooking, usually including cinnamon, cloves, fennel seed, pepper, and star anise.
  • flagrante delicto — Law. in the very act of committing the offense.
  • flog a dead horse — a large, solid-hoofed, herbivorous quadruped, Equus caballus, domesticated since prehistoric times, bred in a number of varieties, and used for carrying or pulling loads, for riding, and for racing.
  • floppy disk drive — disk drive
  • flowering dogwood — a North American dogwood tree, Cornus florida, having small greenish flowers in the spring, surrounded by white or pink bracts that resemble petals: the state flower and the state tree of Virginia.
  • folie de grandeur — a delusion of grandeur; megalomania.
  • follow the leader — a child's game in which players, one behind the other, follow a leader and must repeat or follow everything he or she does.
  • for all the world — the earth or globe, considered as a planet.
  • for ever and ever — for eternity
  • forced convection — Forced convection is convection in which the movement of fluid does not happen naturally but is helped by a device such as a fan or pump.
  • fore-and-aft sail — any of various sails, as jib-headed sails, gaff sails, lugsails, lateen sails, spritsails, staysails, and jibs, that do not set on yards and whose normal position, when not trimmed, is in a fore-and-aft direction amidships.
  • forensic evidence — evidence obtained by the use of science, for example DNA evidence, etc
  • forensic medicine — the application of medical knowledge to questions of civil and criminal law, especially in court proceedings.
  • forever and a day — without ever ending; eternally: to last forever.
  • fort leonard wood — a military reservation and U.S. Army training center in SW Missouri, SW of Rolla.
  • foundation course — A foundation course is a course that you do at some colleges and universities in order to prepare yourself for a longer or more advanced course.
  • four-eyed opossum — a small opossum, Metachirops (Philander) opossum, ranging from Mexico to Brazil, having a white spot above each eye.
  • four-letter words — any of a number of short words, usually of four letters, considered offensive or vulgar because of their reference to excrement or sex.
  • four-rowed barley — a class of barley having, in each spike, six rows of grain, with two pairs of rows overlapping.
  • fourfold purchase — a tackle that is composed of a rope passed through two fourfold blocks in such a way as to provide mechanical power in the ratio of 1 to 5 or 1 to 4, depending on whether hauling is done on the running or the standing block and without considering friction. Compare tackle (def 2).
  • fractal dimension — (mathematics)   A common type of fractal dimension is the Hausdorff-Besicovich Dimension, but there are several different ways of computing fractal dimension. Fractal dimension can be calculated by taking the limit of the quotient of the log change in object size and the log change in measurement scale, as the measurement scale approaches zero. The differences come in what is exactly meant by "object size" and what is meant by "measurement scale" and how to get an average number out of many different parts of a geometrical object. Fractal dimensions quantify the static *geometry* of an object. For example, consider a straight line. Now blow up the line by a factor of two. The line is now twice as long as before. Log 2 / Log 2 = 1, corresponding to dimension 1. Consider a square. Now blow up the square by a factor of two. The square is now 4 times as large as before (i.e. 4 original squares can be placed on the original square). Log 4 / log 2 = 2, corresponding to dimension 2 for the square. Consider a snowflake curve formed by repeatedly replacing ___ with _/\_, where each of the 4 new lines is 1/3 the length of the old line. Blowing up the snowflake curve by a factor of 3 results in a snowflake curve 4 times as large (one of the old snowflake curves can be placed on each of the 4 segments _/\_). Log 4 / log 3 = 1.261... Since the dimension 1.261 is larger than the dimension 1 of the lines making up the curve, the snowflake curve is a fractal. [sci.fractals FAQ].
  • frames per second — (unit)   (fps) The unit of measurement of the frame rate of a moving image.
  • frankenstein food — any foodstuff that has been genetically modified
  • frederick pollock — Sir Frederick, 1845–1937, English legal scholar and author.
  • free-body diagram — A free-body diagram is a diagram of a structure in which all supports are replaced by forces.
  • freedom of speech — the right of people to express their opinions publicly without governmental interference, subject to the laws against libel, incitement to violence or rebellion, etc.
  • freight forwarder — a person or firm that arranges to pick up or deliver goods on instructions of a shipper or a consignee from or to a point by various necessary conveyances and common carriers.
  • french somaliland — a former name of Djibouti (def 1).
  • friend of dorothy — a male homosexual
  • from head to foot — all over one's body
  • from side to side — movement: back and forth
  • front-end payment — a payment required or incurred in advance of a project in order to get it under way
  • front-wheel drive — a drive system in which engine power is transmitted through the front wheels only.
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