19-letter words containing f, i, l, s
- infantile paralysis — poliomyelitis.
- inflationary spiral — Geometry. a plane curve generated by a point moving around a fixed point while constantly receding from or approaching it.
- informal settlement — a squatter camp
- interfacial tension — the surface tension at the interface of two liquids.
- isidorus of miletus — flourished 6th century a.d, Byzantine engineer. He was one of the architects of Hagia Sophia; (originally an Orthodox cathedral and currently a museum in Istanbul, Turkey).
- isle of shoals boat — a sailing boat formerly used in Ipswich Bay, Massachusetts, rigged with two spritsails or gaff sails.
- islet of langerhans — any of several masses of endocrine cells in the pancreas that secrete insulin, somatostatin, and glucagon.
- isthmus of san blas — the narrowest part of the Isthmus of Panama. Width: about 50 km (30 miles)
- italian east africa — a former Italian territory in E Africa, formed in 1936 by the merging of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland with newly conquered Ethiopia: taken by the British Imperial forces 1941.
- jacques montgolfier — Jacques Étienne [zhahk ey-tyen] /ʒɑk eɪˈtyɛn/ (Show IPA), 1745–99, and his brother Joseph Michel [zhaw-zef mee-shel] /ʒɔˈzɛf miˈʃɛl/ (Show IPA) 1740–1810, French aeronauts: inventors of the first practical balloon 1783.
- knights of columbus — an international fraternal and benevolent organization of Roman Catholic men, founded in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1882.
- ladies-of-the-night — plural of lady-of-the-night.
- languages of choice — C and Lisp. Nearly every hacker knows one of these, and most good ones are fluent in both. Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential communities. There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers with Fortran, or even assembler, as their language of choice. They often prefer to be known as Real Programmers, and other hackers consider them a bit odd (see "The Story of Mel"). Assembler is generally no longer considered interesting or appropriate for anything but HLL implementation, glue, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems programs. Fortran occupies a shrinking niche in scientific programming. Most hackers tend to frown on languages like Pascal and Ada, which don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for hacking (see bondage-and-discipline language), and to regard everything even remotely connected with COBOL or other traditional card walloper languages as a total and unmitigated loss.
- lay one's finger on — to indicate, identify, or locate accurately
- library of congress — one of the major library collections in the world, located in Washington, D.C., and functioning in some ways as the national library of the U.S. although not officially designated as such: established by Congress in 1800 for service to its members, but now also serving government agencies, other libraries, and the public.
- life-support system — A life-support system is the same as a life-support machine.
- lift up one's voice — to speak out loudly
- limit of resolution — the capacity of an optical system to resolve point objects as separate images.
- line-of-battle ship — ship of the line.
- live one's own life — If you live your own life, you live in the way that you want to and accept responsibility for your actions and decisions, without other people's advice or interference.
- logical shift right — logical shift
- look (like) oneself — to appear to be in normal health, spirits, etc.
- lose in the shuffle — to leave out or disregard in the confusion of things
- loss-of-containment — Loss-of-containment happens when a fluid which is usually contained somewhere escapes from that place.
- love at first sight — instant romantic attraction to sb
- low insertion force — (hardware) (LIF) PGA/SPGA sockets with no handle. The integrated circuit is simply pushed into the socket, and levered out to remove. Most motherboard processor sockets are now ZIF rather than LIF.
- luminous efficiency — the perceived brightness of light as a ratio of the total luminous flux to total radiant flux of the source; a measure of brightness obtained by dividing the source's luminous flux by the consumption of its energy.
- lyon office of arms — Heralds' Office.
- mail transfer agent — Message Transfer Agent
- malicious falsehood — a lie told by someone who knows the lie is false or knows it will do harm to the person it is concerning
- manned space flight — space travel in vehicles with a human crew
- mid-autumn festival — a Chinese festival that is held to celebrate the end of the summer harvest, when the crops have been gathered.
- miracle of st. mark — a painting (1548) by Tintoretto.
- missing fundamental — a tone, not present in the sound received by the ear, whose pitch is that of the difference between the two tones that are sounded
- modulus of rigidity — shear modulus.
- network file system — (networking, operating system) (NFS) A protocol developed by Sun Microsystems, and defined in RFC 1094, which allows a computer to access files over a network as if they were on its local disks. This protocol has been incorporated in products by more than two hundred companies, and is now a de facto standard. NFS is implemented using a connectionless protocol (UDP) in order to make it stateless. See Nightmare File System, WebNFS.
- non-transferability — to convey or remove from one place, person, etc., to another: He transferred the package from one hand to the other.
- nordrhein-westfalen — German name of North Rhine-Westphalia.
- norfolk island pine — a coniferous evergreen tree, Araucaria heterophylla (or A. excelsa), having whorled branches and needlelike foliage, widely cultivated as a houseplant.
- parainfluenza virus — any of a group of viruses that cause respiratory infections with influenza-like symptoms, esp in children
- paraphase amplifier — an amplifier that produces a push-pull output from a single input.
- peroxysulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 1).
- persian gulf states — group of Arab sheikdoms along the Persian Gulf: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, & United Arab Emirates
- phacoemulsification — the removal of a cataract by first liquefying the affected lens with ultrasonic vibrations and then extracting it by suction.
- phakoemulsification — the removal of a cataract by first liquefying the affected lens with ultrasonic vibrations and then extracting it by suction.
- pillars of hercules — the two promontories at the E end of the Strait of Gibraltar: the Rock of Gibraltar on the European side and the Jebel Musa on the African side; according to legend, formed by Hercules
- pistol-handle knife — a table knife, especially of the 18th century, having a slightly curved handle resembling the grip of a flintlock pistol.
- plastic deformation — In plastic deformation a material changes shape when a stress is applied to it and does not go back to its original state when the stress is removed.
- play footsie (with) — to touch feet or rub knees (with) in a caressing way, as under the table
- post office problem — (algorithm) Given a set of points (in N dimensions), find another point which minimises the sum of the distances from that point to each of the others.