15-letter words containing f, i, r, s
- ray-finned fish — any of various bony fishes of the subclass Actinopterygii, having strong slender rays, excluding the coelacanth and lungfish.
- rayside-balfour — a town in S Ontario, in S Canada.
- read oneself in — to assume possession of a benefice by publicly reading the Thirty-nine Articles
- ready-furnished — (of a room, house, office, etc) fitted with furniture before being rented or sold
- reafforestation — replanting with trees
- reference strip — a strip of film used to help calculate and monitor the exposing and processing of photographs
- refuelling stop — a stop made so that fresh fuel can be supplied (to an aircraft, vehicle, etc)
- refuse disposal — the act of disposing of rubbish and waste
- register office — building where civil records are kept
- registry office — a government office and depository in which records and civil registers are kept and civil marriages performed.
- relapsing fever — one of a group of fevers characterized by relapses, occurring in many tropical countries, and caused by several species of spirochetes transmitted by several species of lice and ticks.
- relief supplies — food, water, medication, clothes, etc given to people in need, esp in disaster areas
- relieve oneself — to ease or alleviate (pain, distress, anxiety, need, etc.).
- reserve officer — a noncareer commissioned officer in a military reserve unit who has served on active duty and who may be recalled to active service during an emergency.
- respecification — the act of specifying.
- reversing falls — a series of rapids in the Saint John River, New Brunswick, Canada, the flow of which regularly reverses itself owing to the force an incoming tide
- reworked fossil — a fossil eroded from sediment and redeposited in younger sediment
- rhodesian front — the governing party in Zimbabwe (then called Rhodesia) 1962–78
- riemann surface — a geometric representation of a function of a complex variable in which a multiple-valued function is depicted as a single-valued function on several planes, the planes being connected at some of the points at which the function takes on more than one value.
- right of asylum — the right of alien fugitives to protection or nonextradition in a country or its embassy.
- right of search — the privilege of a nation at war to search neutral ships on the high seas for contraband or other matter, carried in violation of neutrality, that may subject the ship to seizure.
- rime suffisante — full rhyme.
- rite of passage — Anthropology. a ceremony performed to facilitate or mark a person's change of status upon any of several highly important occasions, as at the onset of puberty or upon entry into marriage or into a clan.
- roaring forties — the stormy oceanic areas between 40° and 50° south latitude
- rockrose family — the plant family Cistaceae, characterized by herbaceous plants and shrubs having simple, usually opposite leaves, solitary or clustered flowers, and capsular fruit, and including the frostweed, pinweed, and rockrose.
- ronne ice shelf — an ice barrier in Antarctica, in SW Weddell Sea, bordered by Ellsworth Land on the NW and Berkner Island on the E.
- rose of jericho — an Asian plant, Anastatica hierochuntica, of the mustard family, which, after drying and curling up, expands when moistened.
- round whitefish — a whitefish, Prosopium cylindraceum, found in northern North America and Siberia, having silvery sides and a dark bronze back.
- rule one's life — If you say that something rules someone's life, you mean that it affects everything they do, usually in a negative way.
- saffian leather — leather made of sheepskin or goatskin tanned with sumac and usually dyed a bright color
- schiffs-reagent — a solution of rosaniline and sulfurous acid in water, used to test for the presence of aldehydes.
- scolopendriform — resembling scolopendra
- securities firm — a firm that deals in securities
- security forces — police or soldiers responsible for maintaining security
- self perception — the act or faculty of perceiving, or apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding.
- self-absorption — preoccupation with oneself or one's own affairs.
- self-admiration — a feeling of wonder, pleasure, or approval.
- self-authorized — given or endowed with authority: an authorized agent.
- self-caricature — a picture, description, etc., ludicrously exaggerating the peculiarities or defects of persons or things: His caricature of the mayor in this morning's paper is the best he's ever drawn.
- self-censorship — the act or practice of censoring.
- self-correcting — automatically adjusting to or correcting mistakes, malfunctions, etc.: a self-correcting mechanism.
- self-disclosure — the act or an instance of disclosing; exposure; revelation.
- self-energizing — giving rise to energy or power from within itself or oneself; capable of generating energy or power automatically.
- self-enrichment — an act of enriching.
- self-expression — the expression or assertion of one's own personality, as in conversation, behavior, poetry, or painting.
- self-expressive — the expression or assertion of one's own personality, as in conversation, behavior, poetry, or painting.
- self-flattering — praise and exaggeration of one's own achievements coupled with a denial or glossing over of one's faults or failings; self-congratulation.
- self-forgetting — self-forgetful.
- self-generating — producing from within itself.
- self-generation — production or reproduction of something without the aid of an external agent; spontaneous generation.