21-letter words containing f, i, n, e, s
- feline leukemia virus — a retrovirus, mainly affecting cats, that depresses the immune system and leads to opportunistic infections, lymphosarcoma, and other disorders. Abbreviation: FeLV, FLV.
- financial times index — one of the indexes of share prices produced by the Financial Times, especially the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index
- finite state automata — Finite State Machine
- flip someone the bird — give someone the finger (see phrase under finger)
- food conversion ratio — a ratio expressing the weight of food required to produce a unit gain in the live weight of an animal
- foot-in-mouth disease — the habit of making inappropriate, insensitive, or imprudent statements.
- for someone's benefit — something that is advantageous or good; an advantage: He explained the benefits of public ownership of the postal system.
- for the benefit of sb — If you say that someone is doing something for the benefit of a particular person, you mean that they are doing it for that person.
- foreground processing — a type of processing that supports interaction between interactive and batch operations
- foreign correspondent — a correspondent, as for a periodical, assigned to send back articles and news dispatches from a foreign country for publication.
- forensic anthropology — the branch of physical anthropology in which anthropological data, criteria, and techniques are used to determine the sex, age, genetic population, or parentage of skeletal or biological materials in questions of civil or criminal law.
- fort lesley j. mcnair — a military reservation in SW Washington, D.C., on the Potomac River, SW of the Capitol.
- framing specification — A specification of the "protocol bits" that surround the "data bits" on a communications channel to allow the data to be "framed" into chunks, like start and stop bits in EIA-232. It allows a receiver to synchronize at points along the data stream.
- franco-belgian system — French system.
- fraudulent conversion — conversion committed with the intent to defraud
- free alongside vessel — (of a shipment of goods) delivered to the dock without charge to the buyer, but excluding the cost of loading onto the vessel
- freedom of expression — the unrestrained right to voice ideas, opinions, etc
- french fried potatoes — a more formal name for chips
- friends with benefits — friends who have a casual sexual relationship with no expectation of commitment
- general of the armies — a special rank held by John J. Pershing, equivalent to general of the army.
- get into the swing of — If you get into the swing of something, you become very involved in it and enjoy what you are doing.
- highest common factor — greatest common divisor. Abbreviation: H.C.F.
- house of prostitution — a brothel.
- hubble classification — a method of classifying galaxies depending on whether they are elliptical, spiral, barred spiral, or irregular
- identification papers — documents that serve to establish someone's identity
- illinois bundleflower — a warm-season perennial, Desmanthus illinoensis, having small brown legumes and fernlike leaves, native to North American prairies, glades, and pastures.
- in (or out of) phase — in (or not in) a state of exactly parallel movements, oscillations, etc.; in (or not in) synchronization
- in a state of undress — If someone is in a state of undress, they do not have all their clothes on.
- in phase/out of phase — If two things are out of phase with each other, they are not working or happening together as they should. If two things are in phase, they are working or occurring together as they should.
- in the course of time — eventually
- in the first instance — You say in the first instance to mention something that is the first step in a series of actions.
- infectious ectromelia — ectromelia (def 2).
- inflationary universe — a version of the big bang theory in which the universe underwent very rapid growth during the first fraction of a second before it settled down to its current rate of expansion.
- information scientist — someone who works in information science
- insurance certificate — a certificate that shows that a person or organization has insurance
- interest-rate futures — financial futures based on projected movements of interest rates
- isolation transformer — An isolation transformer is a transformer with physically separate primary and secondary windings, that prevent it from transferring unwanted noise from the input circuit to the output windings.
- jewish defense league — an organization of militant Jewish activists, founded in 1968 in the U.S. to combat anti-Semitism and defend Jewish interests worldwide. Abbr.: JDL.
- joint chiefs of staff — the chiefs of staff of the army and the air force, the commandant of the marine corps, and the chief of naval operations, together with a chairman selected from one of the branches of the armed forces, serving as the principal military advisory body to the president, the National Security Council, and the secretary of defense.
- knock someone for six — to upset or overwhelm someone completely; stun
- lady windermere's fan — a comedy (1892) by Oscar Wilde.
- lafcadio's adventures — French Les Caves du Vatican. a novel (1914) by André Gide.
- 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.
- 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
- lost in the underflow — (jargon) Too small to be worth considering; more specifically, small beyond the limits of accuracy or measurement. This is a reference to "floating point underflow". The Hacker's Jargon File claimed that it is also a pun on "undertow" (a kind of fast, cold current that sometimes runs just offshore and can be dangerous to swimmers). "Well, sure, photon pressure from the stadium lights alters the path of a thrown baseball, but that effect gets lost in the underflow". Compare epsilon, epsilon squared; see also overflow bit.