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21-letter words containing f, i, n, a, l

  • knights of st columba — an international, semi-secret fraternal and charitable order for Catholic laymen, which originated in New Haven, Connecticut in 1882 (the Knights of Columbus)
  • lady windermere's fan — a comedy (1892) by Oscar Wilde.
  • lafcadio's adventures — French Les Caves du Vatican. a novel (1914) by André Gide.
  • lateral magnification — the ratio of the height of the image to the height of the object in a lens or other optical system.
  • law of thermodynamics — any of three principles variously stated in equivalent forms, being the principle that the change of energy of a thermodynamic system is equal to the heat transferred minus the work done (first law of thermodynamics) the principle that no cyclic process is possible in which heat is absorbed from a reservoir at a single temperature and converted completely into mechanical work (second law of thermodynamics) and the principle that it is impossible to reduce the temperature of a system to absolute zero in a finite number of operations (third law of thermodynamics)
  • leaning tower of pisa — a round, marble campanile in Pisa, Italy, begun in 1174 and now 17 feet (5.2 meters) out of the perpendicular in its height of 179 feet (54 meters).
  • learning difficulties — difficulty experienced in reaching the average standard of people of the same age group as regards intellectual and cognitive skills and performance
  • least significant bit — (data)   (LSB) Bit zero, the bit of a binary number giving the number of ones, the last or rightmost bit when the number is written in the usual way.
  • level of significance — significance level.
  • line of communication — a means by which information may be transmitted from one person to another
  • linear transformation — linear map
  • liquefied natural gas — a mixture of various gases, esp methane, liquefied under pressure for transportation and used as an engine fuel
  • macintosh file system — (file system)   A file on the Macintosh consists of two parts, called forks. The "data fork" contains the data which would normally be stored in the file on other operating systems. The "resource fork" contains a collection of arbitrary attribute/value pairs, including program segments, icon bitmaps, and parametric values. Yet more information regarding Macintosh files is stored by the Finder in a hidden file, called the "Desktop Database". Because of the complications in storing different parts of a Macintosh file in non-Macintosh file systems that only handle consecutive data in one part, it is common to only send the Data fork or to convert the Macintosh file into some other format before transferring it.
  • magnetic flux density — Also called magnetic flux density. a vector quantity used as a measure of a magnetic field. Symbol: B.
  • magnetocaloric effect — an increase or decrease of the temperature of a thermally isolated magnetic substance accompanying an increase or decrease in the intensity of a magnetic field.
  • magnetofluid dynamics — magnetohydrodynamics.
  • magnificent riflebird — a bird of paradise, Craspedophora magnifica
  • make a pig of oneself — If you say that someone is making a pig of themselves, you are criticizing them for eating a very large amount at one meal.
  • multiplication factor — the ratio of the number of neutrons in a generation to the number of neutrons in the previous generation: when the multiplication factor is equal to or greater than one, a chain reaction is possible
  • muon-catalysed fusion — an experimental form of nuclear fusion in which hydrogen and deuterium muonic atoms are formed. Because the mass of the muon is much larger than that of the electron, the atoms are smaller, and the nuclei are close enough for fusion to occur
  • myocardial infarction — heart attack. Abbreviation: MI.
  • nellis air force base — the largest air base in the U.S. Air Force's Tactical Air Command, located near Las Vegas, Nev., and developed from what began in 1941 as a U.S. Army Air Corps field.
  • 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.
  • nitrosylsulfuric acid — a clear, straw-colored, oily, corrosive liquid, HNO 5 S, used chiefly in the manufacture of dyes.
  • operational amplifier — a high-gain, high-input impedance amplifier, usually an integrated circuit, that can perform mathematical operations when suitably wired.
  • partial reinforcement — the process of randomly rewarding an organism for making a response on only some of the occasions it makes it
  • performance appraisal — the assessment, at regular intervals, of an employee's performance at work
  • piero della francesca — Piero della [pee-air-oh del-uh;; Italian pye-raw del-lah] /piˈɛər oʊ ˈdɛl ə;; Italian ˈpyɛ rɔ ˈdɛl lɑ/ (Show IPA), (Piero dei Franceschi) c1420–92, Italian painter.
  • 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).
  • point of articulation — place of articulation.
  • professional services — (job)   A department of a supplier providing consultancy and programming manpower for the supplier's products.
  • reconnaissance flight — a flight made by an aircraft in order to obtain military information about a particular place
  • 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.
  • safe in the knowledge — If you do something safe in the knowledge that something else is the case, you do the first thing confidently because you are sure of the second thing.
  • sales finance company — a finance company that purchases, at a discount, installment contracts from dealers or that finances retail sales.
  • 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.
  • silicon tetrafluoride — a colorless, fuming gas, SiF 4 , used chiefly in the manufacture of fluosilicic acid.
  • single parent benefit — a form of government funded financial assistance paid to single parents
  • social stratification — the act or an instance of stratifying.
  • sovereign wealth fund — an investment fund created using the financial assets of a national government
  • split-finger fastball — a type of fastball that sinks abruptly as it nears home plate, thrown with the grip used for a forkball
  • split-screen facility — a facility allowing different scenes to be shown on screen at the same time
  • statistical inference — the theory, methods, and practice of forming judgments about the parameters of a population, usually on the basis of random sampling
  • stem-and-leaf diagram — a histogram in which the data points falling within each class interval are listed in order
  • supplementary benefit — (formerly) an extra amount of money that is paid to someone by the government, in addition to their normal income. Replaced by income support in 1988
  • surface of revolution — a surface formed by revolving a plane curve about a given line.
  • take one's (own) life — to commit suicide
  • tetrabromofluorescein — eosin (def 1).
  • the battle of britain — from August to October 1940, the prolonged bombing of S England by the German Luftwaffe and the successful resistance by the RAF Fighter Command, which put an end to the German plan of invading Britain
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