21-letter words containing f, e, r, t, i
- member of the wedding — a novel (1946) and play (1950) by Carson McCullers.
- minister of the crown — any Government minister of cabinet rank
- mistress of the robes — (in Britain) a lady of high rank in charge of the Queen's wardrobe
- necrotising fasciitis — a disease caused by the bacterium streptococcus pyogenes, in which the fasciae of the muscles or other organs become inflamed, resulting in rapid destruction of overlying tissues
- neither fish nor fowl — any of various cold-blooded, aquatic vertebrates, having gills, commonly fins, and typically an elongated body covered with scales.
- network filing system — (spelling) Misnomer for Network File System.
- 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.
- no smoke without fire — the evidence strongly suggests something has indeed happened
- nominative of address — a noun naming the person to whom one is speaking.
- north pacific current — a warm current flowing eastward across the Pacific Ocean.
- of time and the river — a novel (1935) by Thomas Wolfe.
- one foot in the grave — near to death
- operational amplifier — a high-gain, high-input impedance amplifier, usually an integrated circuit, that can perform mathematical operations when suitably wired.
- pacific standard time — See under standard time.
- part of the furniture — If you describe someone or something as part of the furniture, you are suggesting that they have been somewhere such as their place of work for such a long time that it is hard to imagine that place without them.
- partial reinforcement — the process of randomly rewarding an organism for making a response on only some of the occasions it makes it
- partition coefficient — the ratio of the concentrations of a substance in two heterogenous phases in equilibrium with each other
- pathfinder prospectus — a prospectus regarding the flotation of a new company that contains only sufficient details to test the market reaction
- 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 indicator — a quantitative or qualitative measurement, or any other criterion, by which the performance, efficiency, achievement, etc of a person or organization can be assessed, often by comparison with an agreed standard or target
- persistence of memory — a painting (1931) by Salvador Dali.
- persistence of vision — the retention of a visual image for a short period of time after the removal of the stimulus that produced it: the phenomenon that produces the illusion of movement when viewing motion pictures.
- 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).
- powersoft corporation — (company) A leading vendor of client/server application development tools. In February 1994, Watcom became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Powersoft Corporation which merged with Sybase on 13 February 1995. In April 1995, the new company is the fastest growing top-ten software company and the seventh largest software company in the world. Headquarters: Concord, Massachusetts, USA.
- preacquisition profit — the retained profit of a company earned before a takeover and therefore not eligible for distribution as a dividend to the shareholders of the acquiring company
- prefect of discipline — a senior master in a Jesuit school or college
- profit-sharing scheme — a scheme employing profit-sharing; a system in which a portion of the net profit of a business is distributed to its employees, usually in proportion to their wages or their length of service
- program temporary fix — (programming) (PTF) (Colloquially: Probably This Fixes) An IBM sanctioned patch, often implemented using ZAP or SUPERZAP.
- promoter of the faith — devil's advocate (def 2).
- reconnaissance flight — a flight made by an aircraft in order to obtain military information about a particular place
- record of achievement — a statement of the personal and educational development of each pupil
- 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.
- reinforcement therapy — a behavior modification technique in which appropriate behavior is strengthened through systematic reinforcement.
- return from interrupt — (programming) (RTI) An instruction mnemonic on many computers including the 6502 and 6800. The variant "RETI" is found among former Zilog Z80 hackers (almost nobody programs these things in assembly code anymore). The Intel 80x86 equivalent is "IRET".
- road traffic accident — an accident involving vehicles
- rutherford scattering — the scattering of an alpha particle through a large angle with respect to the original direction of motion of the particle, caused by an atom (Rutherford atom) with most of the mass and all of the positive electric charge concentrated at a center or nucleus.
- saint-maur-des-fosses — a town in N central France, near Paris, on the Marne River.
- saponification number — the number of milligrams of potassium hydroxide required to saponify one gram of a given ester, especially a glyceride.
- satisficing behaviour — the form of behaviour demonstrated by firms who seek satisfactory profits and satisfactory growth rather than maximum profits
- school of the soldier — an institution where instruction is given, especially to persons under college age: The children are at school.
- scientific empiricism — the philosophy that there are no real differences between the sciences.
- 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.
- set the world on fire — the earth or globe, considered as a planet.
- sieve of eratosthenes — a method of obtaining prime numbers by sifting out the composite numbers from the set of natural numbers so that only prime numbers remain.
- silicon tetrafluoride — a colorless, fuming gas, SiF 4 , used chiefly in the manufacture of fluosilicic acid.
- sing a different tune — a succession of musical sounds forming an air or melody, with or without the harmony accompanying it.
- single parent benefit — a form of government funded financial assistance paid to single parents
- snap one's fingers at — any of the terminal members of the hand, especially one other than the thumb.
- something for nothing — If you say that someone is getting something for nothing, you disapprove of the fact that they are getting what they want without doing or giving anything in return.