26-letter words containing f, e, r, t, o, i
- get in on the ground floor — If you get in on the ground floor, you become involved in a business or plan in the early stages, in order to gain an advantage.
- government printing office — the federal agency that prints and disseminates publications for other federal agencies. Abbreviation: G.P.O., GPO.
- grand army of the republic — an organization, founded in 1866, composed of men who served in the U.S. Army and Navy during the Civil War: its last member died in 1956. Abbreviation: G.A.R.
- gulf intracoastal waterway — a mostly inland water route, partly natural and partly artificial, extending 1550 miles (2500 km) along the Atlantic coast from Boston to Florida Bay (Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway) and 1116 miles (1800 km) along the Gulf coast from Carrabelle, Fla., to Brownsville, Tex. (Gulf Intracoastal Waterway) constructed to protect small craft from the hazards of the open sea.
- have one foot in the grave — an excavation made in the earth in which to bury a dead body.
- headline rate of inflation — a basic rate of inflation before distorting factors have been removed
- healing by first intention — an act or instance of determining mentally upon some action or result.
- horse of a different color — 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.
- in (or out of) contention — having a (or no) chance to win
- in the eye of the beholder — If you say that something such as beauty or art is in the eye of the beholder, you mean that it is a matter of personal opinion.
- inflammatory bowel disease — any intestinal inflammatory disease, especially Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, of unknown cause. Abbreviation: IBD.
- jefferson davis's birthday — June 3 or the first Monday in June, observed as a legal holiday in some Southern states.
- justice of the peace court — (in Scotland, formerly) a court with limited criminal jurisdiction held by justices of the peace in counties: replaced in 1975 by the district court
- knights of the round table — a legendary order of knights created by King Arthur.
- law of action and reaction — any of three laws of classical mechanics, either the law that a body remains at rest or in motion with a constant velocity unless an external force acts on the body (first law of motion) the law that the sum of the forces acting on a body is equal to the product of the mass of the body and the acceleration produced by the forces, with motion in the direction of the resultant of the forces (second law of motion) or the law that for every force acting on a body, the body exerts a force having equal magnitude and the opposite direction along the same line of action as the original force (third law of motion or law of action and reaction)
- law of diminishing returns — diminishing returns (def 2).
- law of multiple proportion — the statement that where two elements can combine to form more than one compound, the ratio by weight of one element to a given weight of the second is usually a small whole number.
- logical interchange format — (file format, file system) (LIF) A Hewlett-Packard simple file system format used to boot HP-PA machines and to interchange files between older HP machines. A LIF file system is a header, containing a single directory, with 10-character case sensitive filenames and 2-byte file types, followed by the files.
- make (or be) friends with — to become (or be) a friend of
- make a virtue of necessity — moral excellence; goodness; righteousness.
- master chief petty officer — a noncommissioned rank above a senior chief petty officer. Abbreviation: MCPO.
- master of the king's music — (in Britain when the sovereign is male) a court post dating from the reign of Charles I. It is an honorary title and normally held by an established English composer
- metropolitan museum of art — the principal museum in New York City: founded in 1870 and housed in its present premises in Central Park since 1880
- minister without portfolio — a minister of state who is not appointed to any specific department in a government.
- most-favored-nation clause — a clause in a commercial treaty or contract by which each signatory agrees to give the other the same treatment that is or will be accorded any other nation.
- multifactorial inheritance — polygenic inheritance.
- national rifle association — a lobbying organization which advocates the right to own and use firearms
- network information center — (NIC) A body that provides information, assistance and services to network users. These will typically include telephone and electronic mail "help desk" type services for users and network information services such as hostnames and addresses which are accessed automatically by computers using some client-server protocol (usually Sun's NIS). See also Network Operations Center.
- network information system — (spelling) A mis-expansion of NIS.
- new business profit margin — A new business profit margin is a system used by insurers to measure the cost of and profit from writing new policies.
- newfoundland standard time — one of the standard times used in Canada, three and a half hours behind Greenwich Mean Time
- official production system — (language) (OPS) The first production system (i.e. rule based) programming language, developed at CMU in 1970 and used for building expert systems. OPS was originally written in Franz Lisp and later ported to other LISP dialects.
- overdraft checking account — a bank account with a credit line permitting checks to be written for an amount above the account balance, subject to a finance charge on the overdraft.
- pellagra-preventive factor — nicotinic acid or its amide, nicotinamide, being the vitamin-B-complex members that serve to prevent pellagra.
- pick up the threads of sth — If you pick up the threads of an activity, you start it again after an interruption. If you pick up the threads of your life, you become more active again after a period of failure or bad luck.
- portable forth environment — (language) (PFE) A highly portable Forth development system based on the ANSI standard for Forth, by Dirk-Uwe Zoller of FHT, Mannheim, Germany. PFE aims to be correct, complete, usable, and simple but it isn't optimised for speed. It supports all dpANS word sets. It runs on Linux, RS/6000, and HP-UX. E-mail: Guido Draheim <[email protected]>.
- principle of superposition — any of several physical laws that the resultant of similar vector quantities at a point is a function of the sum of the individual quantities, especially the law that the displacement at a point in a medium undergoing simple harmonic motion is equal to the sum of the displacements of each individual wave.
- professional office system — (messaging) (PROFS) An office messaging system from IBM, used worldwide, mainly on IBM mainframes.
- public prosecutor's office — the legal department that is responsible for putting people on trial on behalf of the government and people of a particular country
- pulse repetition frequency — the number of pulses per second in a system of pulse transmission. Abbreviation: PRF.
- purely functional language — (language) A language that supports only functional programming and does not allow functions to have side-effects. Program execution consists of evaluation of an expression and all subexpressions are referentially transparent.
- put sb out of their misery — If you put someone out of their misery, you tell them something that they are very anxious to know.
- quite apart from something — used to indicate that you are aware of one aspect of a situation, but that you are going to focus on another aspect
- refinery’s own consumption — Refinery's own consumption is the gas and fuel which is burnt to operate the units in a refinery and generate electricity and steam.
- remembrance of things past — a novel (1913–27) by Marcel Proust.
- resistance transfer factor — R factor.
- richthofen's flying circus — the German 11th Chasing Squadron of World War I, commanded by Baron Richthofen
- scares the life out of you — If you want to emphasize that something scares you a lot, you can say that it scares the hell out of you or scares the life out of you.
- senior chief petty officer — a noncommissioned officer ranking above a chief petty officer and below a master chief petty officer. Abbreviation: SCPO.
- sixty-four-dollar question — the critical or basic question or problem: Whether the measure will get through Congress this session or not is the sixty-four-dollar question.