18-letter words containing f, i, c, o
- political football — a political issue that is continually debated but has not yet been resolved
- pontifical college — the chief body of priests in ancient Rome.
- prefect of studies — a senior master in a Jesuit school or college
- prince of darkness — Satan.
- process identifier — (operating system) (PID) An integer used by the Unix kernel to uniquely identify a process. PIDs are returned by the fork system call and can be passed to wait() or kill() to perform actions on the given process.
- product life cycle — the four stages (introduction, growth, maturity, and decline) into one of which the sales of a product fall during its market life
- protein deficiency — a lack or insuffiency of protein
- provably difficult — The set or property of problems for which it can be proven that no polynomial-time algorithm exists, only exponential-time algorithms.
- purchasing officer — the member of staff in an organization who is responsible for buying goods or products
- quality of service — (communications, networking) (QoS) The performance properties of a network service, possibly including throughput, transit delay, priority. Some protocols allow packets or streams to include QoS requirements.
- quick off the mark — If you are quick off the mark, you are quick to understand or respond to something. If you are slow off the mark, you are slow to understand or respond to something.
- rabbit-foot clover — a plant, Trifolium arvense, having trifoliate leaves with narrow leaflets and fuzzy, cylindrical, grayish-pink flower heads.
- rabbit-proof fence — a fence through which rabbits are unable to pass
- raffinate recovery — Raffinate recovery is the use of a substance which is left after a process is complete and the desired substances have been removed.
- reaction formation — a behavioral tendency developed in direct opposition to a repressed impulse.
- real-estate office — the place where a real-estate agent works
- recruiting officer — a person whose job is to recruit staff, esp on behalf of the military
- recursive function — a function defined in terms of the repeated application of a number of simpler functions to their own values, by specifying a base clause and a recursion formula
- reference counting — (programming) A garbage collection technique where each memory cell contains a count of the number of other cells which point to it. If this count reaches zero the cell is freed and its pointers to other cells are followed to decrement their counts, and so on recursively. This technique cannot cope with circular data structures. Cells in such structures refer (indirectly) to themselves and so will never have a zero reference count. This means they would never be reclaimed, even when there are no references from outside the structure.
- reflection density — a measure of the extent to which a surface reflects light or other electromagnetic radiation, equal to the logarithm to base ten of the reciprocal of the reflectance
- reinforced plastic — plastic with fibrous matter, such as carbon fibre, embedded in it to confer additional strength
- reproduction proof — repro proof.
- schofield barracks — a town on central Oahu, in central Hawaii.
- school certificate — (in England and Wales between 1917 and 1951 and currently in New Zealand) a certificate awarded to school pupils who pass a public examination: the equivalent of GCSE
- school of motoring — a centre where people pay for lessons to learn to drive
- scientific officer — a police officer who carries out forensic examinations
- scottish blackface — a common breed of hardy mountain sheep having horns and a black face, kept chiefly on the mainland of Scotland
- secondary offering — the sale of a large block of outstanding stock off the floor of an exchange, usually by a major stockholder.
- security of tenure — (in Britain) the right of a tenant to continue to occupy a dwelling or site unless the landlord obtains a court order for possession of the property or termination of the tenancy agreement
- self-actualization — the achievement of one's full potential through creativity, independence, spontaneity, and a grasp of the real world.
- self-certification — statement of sick leave
- self-comprehending — to understand the nature or meaning of; grasp with the mind; perceive: He did not comprehend the significance of the ambassador's remark.
- self-contemplation — the act or process of thinking about oneself or one's values, beliefs, behavior, etc.
- self-contradiction — an act or instance of contradicting oneself or itself.
- self-contradictory — an act or instance of contradicting oneself or itself.
- self-glorification — a glorified or more splendid form of something.
- self-gratification — the act of pleasing or satisfying oneself, especially the gratifying of one's own impulses, needs, or desires.
- self-incrimination — the act of incriminating oneself or exposing oneself to prosecution, especially by giving evidence or testimony.
- self-instructional — pertaining to or constituting learning materials and conditions arranged so that students can proceed to learn on their own with little or no supervision.
- self-justification — the act or fact of justifying oneself, especially of offering excessive reasons, explanations, excuses, etc., for an act, thought, or the like.
- self-mortification — the inflicting of pain or privation on oneself: He was certain that self-mortification was the only road to salvation.
- self-preoccupation — the state of being preoccupied.
- self-recrimination — the act of recriminating, or countercharging: Hope gave way to recrimination with both sides claiming the moral high ground.
- senior aircraftman — a rank in the Royal Air Force comparable to that of a private in the army, though not the lowest rank in the Royal Air Force
- sense of direction — Your sense of direction is your ability to know roughly where you are, or which way to go, even when you are in an unfamiliar place.
- shrubby cinquefoil — a small shrub, Potentilla fruticosa, of the rose family, native to the Northern temperate region, having pinnate leaves and numerous, showy, bright-yellow flowers.
- sign of the zodiac — one of the twelve constellations along the path of the ecliptic.
- significant symbol — a verbal or nonverbal gesture, as a word or smile, that has acquired a conventionalized meaning.
- silvery cinquefoil — any of several plants belonging to the genus Potentilla, of the rose family, having yellow, red, or white five-petaled flowers, as P. reptans (creeping cinquefoil) of the Old World, or P. argentea (silvery cinquefoil) of North America.
- six-finger country — an isolated area considered as being inhabited by people who practise inbreeding