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18-letter words containing f, e, t, o

  • bolt from the blue — If a piece of news comes like a bolt from the blue, it is completely unexpected and very surprising.
  • bone of contention — If a particular matter or issue is a bone of contention, it is the subject of a disagreement or argument.
  • bore the pants off — to bore extremely
  • bottom-of-the-line — being the cheapest item of its kind made by a manufacturer; produced as inexpensively as possible (opposed to top-of-the-line): bottom-of-the-line merchandise that has no warranty.
  • bounty-fed farmers — farmers who benefit from subsidies
  • breach of contract — the act of breaking the conditions of a contract
  • breach of security — an act that violates a country, area, or building's security measures
  • brute force attack — (cryptography)   A method of breaking a cipher (that is, to decrypt a specific encrypted text) by trying every possible key. The quicker the brute force attack, the weaker the cipher. Feasibility of brute force attack depends on the key length of the cipher, and on the amount of computational power available to the attacker. Brute force attack is impossible against the ciphers with variable-size key, such as a one-time pad cipher.
  • california current — a cold current originating in the northern part of the Pacific Ocean, flowing SE along the coast of W North America.
  • cap of maintenance — a ceremonial cap or hat worn or carried as a symbol of office, rank, etc
  • cash-for-questions — of, involved in, or relating to a scandal in which some MPs were accused of accepting bribes to ask particular questions in Parliament
  • catherine of siena — Saint. 1347–80, Italian mystic and ascetic; patron saint of the Dominican order. Feast day: April 29
  • center of symmetry — a point within a crystal through which any straight line extends to points on opposite surfaces of the crystal at equal distances.
  • centre of pressure — the point in a body at which the resultant pressure acts when the body is immersed in a fluid
  • certification mark — a mark that certifies the origin, material, quality, mode of manufacture, accuracy, or other characteristic of a product or service: “UL” is a certification mark for appliances meeting the safety standards of Underwriters Laboratories, Inc.
  • charge of quarters — a member of the armed forces who handles administration in his or her unit, esp after duty hours
  • check verification — Check verification is a system that checks national databases of information about individuals to make sure that checks will be honored and fraud is not being committed.
  • chord of the sixth — sixth chord.
  • christian reformed — of or relating to a Protestant denomination (Christian Reformed Church) organized in the U.S. in 1857 by groups that had seceded from the Dutch Reformed Church.
  • classified section — the part of a publication that contains classified advertising
  • coffee-table music — unadventurous music
  • college of justice — the official name for the Scottish Court of Session; the supreme court of Scotland
  • comb-footed spider — any of numerous spiders constituting the family Theridiidae, having a comblike row of bristles on the tarsi of the hind legs.
  • combustion furnace — a furnace used in the laboratory to carry out elemental analysis of organic compounds
  • committed facility — an agreement by a bank to provide a customer with funds up to a specified limit at a specified rate of interest
  • compassion fatigue — the inability to react sympathetically to a crisis, disaster, etc, because of overexposure to previous crises, disasters, etc
  • composite function — a function obtained from two given functions, where the range of one function is contained in the domain of the second function, by assigning to an element in the domain of the first function that element in the range of the second function whose inverse image is the image of the element.
  • conditioned reflex — a reflex in which the response (e.g., secretion of saliva in a dog) is occasioned by a secondary stimulus (e.g., the ringing of a bell) repeatedly associated with the primary stimulus (e.g., the sight of meat)
  • configuration item — (jargon)   Hardware or software, or an aggregate of both, which is designated by the project configuration manager (or contracting agency) for configuration management.
  • constructive proof — (mathematics)   A proof that something exists that provides an example or a method for actually constructing it. For example, for any pair of finite real numbers n < 0 and p > 0, there exists a real number 0 < k < 1 such that f(k) = (1-k)*n + k*p = 0. A constructive proof would proceed by rearranging the above to derive an equation for k: k = 1/(1-n/p) From this and the constraints on n and p, we can show that 0 < k < 1. A few mathematicians actually reject *all* non-constructive arguments as invalid; this means, for instance, that the law of the excluded middle (either P or not-P must hold, whatever P is) has to go; this makes proof by contradiction invalid. See intuitionistic logic. Constructive proofs are popular in theoretical computer science, both because computer scientists are less given to abstraction than mathematicians and because intuitionistic logic turns out to be an appropriate theoretical treatment of the foundations of computer science.
  • continued fraction — a number plus a fraction whose denominator contains a number and a fraction whose denominator contains a number and a fraction, and so on
  • contract furniture — furniture designed and manufactured for commercial installation, as in offices, waiting rooms, or lobbies.
  • cooking facilities — equipment necessary for cooking
  • counterreformation — a reform movement to oppose a previous one
  • court of exchequer — (formerly) an English civil court where Crown revenue cases were tried
  • court of st. james — the British royal court
  • crocodile-infested — full of crocodiles
  • crude oil fraction — A crude oil fraction is a component of crude oil, which has its own particular molecular composition, weight, and boiling point.
  • curvature of field — a monochromatic aberration of a lens or other optical system in which the focal surface is curved, the refracted image of an object oriented perpendicular to the axis of the lens lying on a curved surface rather than in a plane perpendicular to the axis.
  • curvature of space — (in relativity) a property of space near massive bodies in which their gravitational field causes light to travel along curved paths.
  • cycle of indiction — indiction (def 3).
  • cycle-of-indiction — a proclamation made every 15 years in the later Roman Empire, fixing the valuation of property to be used as a basis for taxation.
  • de-differentiation — a process by which structures or behaviors that were specialized for a specific function lose their specialization and become simplified or generalized.
  • de-objectification — to present as an object, especially of sight, touch, or other physical sense; make objective; externalize.
  • dead-letter office — an office where undeliverable letters were taken for storage
  • declaration of war — a formal statement made by one country to another that a state of war now exists between them
  • defense calculator — IBM 701
  • deficiency account — an account summarizing the financial condition of an individual or company in danger of bankruptcy.
  • democratic deficit — any situation in which there is believed to be a lack of democratic accountability and control over the decision-making process
  • departure platform — a raised area at a railway station from which passengers can board trains prior to their departing
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