19-letter words containing f, e, l, o, s
- fellow-servant rule — the common-law rule that the employer is not liable to an employee for injuries resulting from the negligence of a fellow employee.
- female circumcision — clitoridectomy.
- female impersonator — a male performer who dresses as and impersonates women.
- finger on the pulse — If you have your finger on the pulse of something, you know all the latest opinions or developments concerning it.
- first international — a socialistic organization (1864–76) formed to unite and promote the interests of workers throughout the world. Compare international (def 6).
- first person plural — a grammatical category of pronouns and verbs used by the speaker to refer to or talk about himself together with others
- first world problem — a fairly minor problem, frustrating situation, or complaint associated with a relatively high standard of living, as opposed to the more serious problems associated with poverty: I’m bored with all my electronic gadgets—such a first world problem!
- first-sale doctrine — a legal principle allowing the purchaser of a lawfully made copy of a copyright-protected work to sell or give away that copy without permission but not to reproduce it.
- five o'clock shadow — the rather dark stubble that appears on a man's face some hours after shaving, typically in the late afternoon if he shaved in the morning.
- five-o'clock shadow — the rather dark stubble that appears on a man's face some hours after shaving, typically in the late afternoon if he shaved in the morning.
- flame-of-the-forest — a leguminous tree, Butea frondosa, native to E India and Myanmar, having hanging clusters of scarlet flowers
- flannelmouth sucker — a sucker, Catostomus latipinnis, of the Colorado River and its tributaries.
- flexible kelly hose — A flexible kelly hose is a hose which carries mud to the kelly.
- floating restaurant — a boat or ship that has been converted for use as a restaurant
- floppy (disk) drive — the controller and mechanism for reading and writing data on floppy disks
- flowering raspberry — a shrub, Rubus ordoratus, of eastern North America, having loose clusters of showy purplish or rose-purple flowers and inedible, dry, red fruit.
- fluoride toothpaste — toothpaste containing a small amount of fluoride as protection against tooth decay
- focal plane shutter — an opaque shield in a camera, lying in the focal plane of the lens, that, when tripped, admits light to expose the film or plate for a predetermined period, usually a fraction of a second
- focal-plane shutter — a camera shutter situated directly in front of the film.
- foregone conclusion — an inevitable conclusion or result.
- four eyes principle — the requirement that a business transaction be approved by at least two individuals
- fractal compression — (algorithm) A technique for encoding images using fractals.
- free alongside quay — (of a shipment of goods) delivered to the quay without charge to the buyer
- free alongside ship — (of a shipment of goods) delivered to the dock without charge to the buyer, but excluding the cost of loading onto the vessel
- functional database — (database, language) A database which uses a functional language as its query language. Databases would seem to be an inappropriate application for functional languages since, a purely functional language would have to return a new copy of the entire database every time (part of) it was updated. To be practically scalable, the update mechanism must clearly be destructive rather than functional; however it is quite feasible for the query language to be purely functional so long as the database is considered as an argument. One approach to the update problem would use a monad to encapsulate database access and ensure it was single threaded. Alternative approaches have been suggested by Trinder, who suggests non-destructive updating with shared data structures, and Sutton who uses a variant of a Phil Wadler's linear type system. There are two main classes of functional database languages. The first is based upon Backus' FP language, of which FQL is probably the best known example. Adaplan is a more recent language which falls into this category. More recently, people have been working on languages which are syntactically very similar to modern functional programming languages, but which also provide all of the features of a database language, e.g. bulk data structures which can be incrementally updated, type systems which can be incrementally updated, and all data persisting in a database. Examples are PFL [Poulovassilis&Small, VLDB-91], and Machiavelli [Ohori et al, ACM SIGMOD Conference, 1998].
- general post office — (in the U.S. postal system) the main post office of a city, county, etc., that also has branch post offices. Abbreviation: G.P.O., GPO.
- giovanni da fiesole — Giovanni da [Italian jaw-vahn-nee dah] /Italian dʒɔˈvɑn ni dɑ/ (Show IPA), Angelico, Fra.
- grandfather's clock — a pendulum floor clock having a case as tall as or taller than a person; tall-case clock; long-case clock.
- greenhouse whitefly — See under whitefly.
- hang on the lips of — to listen to with close attention
- health professional — a person trained to work in any field of physical or mental health.
- heat of sublimation — the heat absorbed by one gram or unit mass of a substance in the process of changing, at a constant temperature and pressure, from a solid to a gaseous state. Compare sublime (def 10).
- helsinki conference — Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.
- hold no terrors for — If something holds no terrors for you, you are not at all frightened or worried by it.
- hospital facilities — the equipment and services provided by a hospital
- house of councilors — the upper house of the Japanese diet.
- house of ill repute — a house of prostitution; whorehouse; brothel.
- hyperfocal distance — the distance, at a given f number, between a camera lens and the nearest point (hyperfocal point) having satisfactory definition when focused at infinity.
- in the light of sth — If something is possible in the light of particular information, it is only possible because you have this information.
- informal settlement — a squatter camp
- interfacial tension — the surface tension at the interface of two liquids.
- isidorus of miletus — flourished 6th century a.d, Byzantine engineer. He was one of the architects of Hagia Sophia; (originally an Orthodox cathedral and currently a museum in Istanbul, Turkey).
- isle of shoals boat — a sailing boat formerly used in Ipswich Bay, Massachusetts, rigged with two spritsails or gaff sails.
- islet of langerhans — any of several masses of endocrine cells in the pancreas that secrete insulin, somatostatin, and glucagon.
- jacques montgolfier — Jacques Étienne [zhahk ey-tyen] /ʒɑk eɪˈtyɛn/ (Show IPA), 1745–99, and his brother Joseph Michel [zhaw-zef mee-shel] /ʒɔˈzɛf miˈʃɛl/ (Show IPA) 1740–1810, French aeronauts: inventors of the first practical balloon 1783.
- ladies-of-the-night — plural of lady-of-the-night.
- languages of choice — C and Lisp. Nearly every hacker knows one of these, and most good ones are fluent in both. Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential communities. There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers with Fortran, or even assembler, as their language of choice. They often prefer to be known as Real Programmers, and other hackers consider them a bit odd (see "The Story of Mel"). Assembler is generally no longer considered interesting or appropriate for anything but HLL implementation, glue, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems programs. Fortran occupies a shrinking niche in scientific programming. Most hackers tend to frown on languages like Pascal and Ada, which don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for hacking (see bondage-and-discipline language), and to regard everything even remotely connected with COBOL or other traditional card walloper languages as a total and unmitigated loss.
- lay one's finger on — to indicate, identify, or locate accurately
- letters of credence — credentials issued to a diplomat or other governmental representative for presentation to the country to which he or she is sent.
- library of congress — one of the major library collections in the world, located in Washington, D.C., and functioning in some ways as the national library of the U.S. although not officially designated as such: established by Congress in 1800 for service to its members, but now also serving government agencies, other libraries, and the public.