16-letter words containing f, e, r, i
- broomrape family — the plant family Orobanchaceae, characterized by scaly, leafless herbaceous plants that are parasitic on the roots of other plants and have irregular flowers and many-seeded capsular fruit, and including beechdrops, broomrape, and squawroot.
- brussels griffon — one of a Belgian breed of toy dogs having a thick, wiry, reddish-brown coat.
- burgundy trefoil — alfalfa.
- burnet saxifrage — a Eurasian umbelliferous plant of the genus Pimpinella, having umbrella-like clusters of white or pink flowers
- buttercup family — the plant family Ranunculaceae, typified by mostly herbaceous plants having usually alternate leaves, multistaminate flowers sometimes lacking petals but with colorful sepals, and including the anemone, buttercup, clematis, columbine, delphinium, and monkshood.
- butterfly orchid — an orchid (Oncidium papilio) with reddish flowers, native to South America
- calcium fluoride — a white, crystalline compound, CaF 2 , insoluble in water, occurring in nature as the mineral fluorite: used as a flux in metallurgy and as a decay preventive in dentifrices.
- carbon bisulfide — carbon disulfide
- carbon disulfide — a heavy, volatile, colorless liquid, CS2, highly flammable and poisonous, used as a solvent, insecticide, etc.
- centrifugal pump — a pump having a high-speed rotating impeller whose blades throw the water outwards
- chemical warfare — warfare in which chemicals other than explosives are used as weapons, esp warfare using asphyxiating or nerve gases, poisons, defoliants, etc
- chevaux-de-frise — plural of cheval-de-frise.
- chilean firebush — South American shrub with scarlet flowers
- chloride of lime — a white powder with the approximate formula CaOCl2, obtained by treating slaked lime with chlorine and used for disinfecting and bleaching
- cholera infantum — an often fatal form of gastroenteritis occurring in infants, not of the same cause as cholera but having somewhat similar characteristics.
- chromic fluoride — a green, crystalline, water-insoluble powder, CrF 3 ⋅4H 2 O or CrF 3 ⋅9H 2 O: used chiefly in printing and dyeing woolens.
- church suffering — the souls in purgatory.
- city of aberdeen — a council area in NE Scotland, established in 1996. Pop: 206 600 (2003 est). Area: 186 sq km (72 sq miles)
- clarified butter — butter with the water and milk solids removed, used for cooking at high temperatures without burning
- code of practice — A code of practice is a set of written rules which explains how people working in a particular profession should behave.
- collective fruit — multiple fruit
- come from behind — sport: win from a disadvantaged position
- come full circle — to arrive back at one's starting point
- complex fraction — a fraction in which the numerator or denominator or both contain fractions
- confederationism — The advocacy of confederation as a means of government.
- confederationist — A supporter of confederation.
- confidence trick — A confidence trick is a trick in which someone deceives you by telling you something that is not true, often to trick you out of money.
- cooperative farm — a farm that is run in cooperation with others in the purchasing and using of machinery, stock, etc, and in the marketing of produce through its own institutions (farmers' cooperatives)
- coreferentiality — (of two words or phrases) having reference to the same person or thing.
- correction fluid — a fluid, usually white, that can be painted over a mistake in writing or typing so that the correct form can be written or typed on top
- council of trent — the council of the Roman Catholic Church that met between 1545 and 1563 at Trent in S Tyrol. Reacting against the Protestants, it reaffirmed traditional Catholic beliefs and formulated the ideals of the Counter-Reformation
- counteroffensive — a series of attacks by a defending force against an attacking enemy
- course of action — a way of proceeding
- court of justice — a legal court
- court of session — the supreme civil court in Scotland
- cracked fraction — A cracked fraction is a petroleum fraction (= a portion separated according to a physical property) that has been broken down from a fraction with larger molecules.
- craftspersonship — The body of activities, skills, techniques, knowledge, and expertise pertinent to (a) particular craft(s).
- crime of passion — a crime, often a murder, committed from passion, esp sexual passion
- criminal offence — an action which is punishable under the law
- croydon facelift — the tightening effect on the skin of a woman's face caused by securing the hair at the back of the head in a tight ponytail
- curried function — (mathematics, programming) A function of N arguments that is considered as a function of one argument which returns another function of N-1 arguments. E.g. in Haskell we can define: average :: Int -> (Int -> Int) (The parentheses are optional). A partial application of average, to one Int, e.g. (average 4), returns a function of type (Int -> Int) which averages its argument with 4. In uncurried languages a function must always be applied to all its arguments but a partial application can be represented using a lambda abstraction: \ x -> average(4,x) Currying is necessary if full laziness is to be applied to functional sub-expressions. It was named after the logician Haskell Curry but the 19th-century logician, Gottlob Frege was the first to propose it and it was first referred to in ["Uber die Bausteine der mathematischen Logik", M. Schoenfinkel, Mathematische Annalen. Vol 92 (1924)]. Stefan Kahrs <[email protected]> reported hearing somebody in Germany trying to introduce "scho"nen" for currying and "finkeln" for "uncurrying". The verb "scho"nen" means "to beautify"; "finkeln" isn't a German word, but it suggests "to fiddle".
- customer profile — a description or analysis of a typical or ideal customer for one's business
- cycle of erosion — the hypothetical sequence of modifications to the earth's surface by erosion, from the original uplift of the land to the ultimate low plain, usually divided into the youthful, mature, and old stages
- darwin's finches — the finches of the subfamily Geospizinae of the Galapagos Islands, showing great variation in bill structure and feeding habits: provided Darwin with evidence to support his theory of evolution
- day of reckoning — If someone talks about the day of reckoning, they mean a day or time in the future when people will be forced to deal with an unpleasant situation which they have avoided until now.
- deboursification — (jargon) Removal of irrelevant newsgroups from the Newsgroups header of a followup. The term applies particularly to the removal of frivolous groups added by one of the Kooks. See also: sneck.
- debt forgiveness — the action or process of forgiving people their debts
- decimal fraction — a fraction whose denominator is some power of 10, usually indicated by a dot (decimal point or point) written before the numerator: as 0.4 = 4/10; 0.126 = 126/1000.
- dedifferentiated — That has undergone dedifferentiation.
- defective number — a positive number that is greater than the sum of all positive integers that are submultiples of it, as 10, which is greater than the sum of 1, 2, and 5.