18-letter words containing f, i, s
- farewell-to-spring — a slender, showy plant, Clarkia amoena, of the evening primrose family, native to western North America, having satiny, cup-shaped, lilac-crimson or reddish-pink flowers and roundish fruit.
- fascicular cambium — cambium that develops within the vascular bundles, producing secondary xylem and phloem.
- fast-food industry — the industry surrounding fast-food restaurants
- feeping creaturism — /fee'ping kree"ch*r-izm/ A deliberate spoonerism for creeping featurism, meant to imply that the system or program in question has become a misshapen creature of hacks. This term isn"t really well defined, but it sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. It is probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in the dark making their customary noises.
- fehling's solution — a blue solution of copper sulfate, Rochelle salt, and sodium hydroxide, used to test for the presence of a sugar, aldehyde, etc.
- feldenkrais method — a system of gentle movements that promote flexibility, coordination, and self-awareness
- ferdinand schiller — Ferdinand Canning Scott [kan-ing] /ˈkæn ɪŋ/ (Show IPA), 1864–1937, English philosopher in the U.S.
- fermat's principle — Optics. the law that the path taken by a ray of light in going from one point to another point will be the path that requires the least time.
- fibonacci sequence — (mathematics) The infinite sequence of numbers beginning 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ... in which each term is the sum of the two terms preceding it. The ratio of successive Fibonacci terms tends to the golden ratio, namely (1 + sqrt 5)/2.
- fibrocartilaginous — a type of cartilage having a large number of fibers.
- field of quotients — a field whose elements are pairs of elements of a given commutative integral domain such that the second element of each pair is not zero. The field of rational numbers is the field of quotients of the integral domain of integers.
- filchner ice shelf — an ice barrier in Antarctica, in the SE Weddell Sea, bordered on the W by Berkner Island.
- filename extension — (filename extension) The portion of a filename, following the final point, which indicates the kind of data stored in the file - the file type. Many operating systems use filename extensions, e.g. Unix, VMS, MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows. They are usually from one to three letters (some sad old OSes support no more than three). Examples include "c" for C source code, "ps" for PostScript, "txt" for arbitrary text. Apart from informing the user what type of content the file holds, filename extensions are typically used to decide which program to launch when a file is "run", e.g. by double-clicking it in a GUI file browser. They are also used by Unix's make to determine how to build one kind of file from another. Compare: MIME type.
- fill someone in on — to provide someone with additional facts, details, etc. about
- financial services — A company or organization that provides financial services is able to help you do things such as make investments or buy a pension or mortgage.
- finite-dimensional — (of a vector space) having a basis consisting of a finite number of elements.
- fire and brimstone — When people talk about fire and brimstone, they are referring to hell and how they think people are punished there after death.
- fire-and-brimstone — threatening punishment in the hereafter: a fire-and-brimstone sermon.
- first and foremost — primarily
- first class module — (programming) A module that is a first class data object of the programming language, e.g. a record containing functions. In a functional language, it is standard to have first class programs, so program building blocks can have the same status.
- first duke of york — a member of the royal house of England that ruled from 1461 to 1485.
- first things first — You say 'first things first' when you are talking about something that should be done or dealt with before anything else because it is the most important.
- first year infants — a class for young children who have just started school
- first-in first-out — (algorithm) (FIFO, or "queue") A data structure or hardware buffer from which items are taken out in the same order they were put in. Also known as a "shelf" from the analogy with pushing items onto one end of a shelf so that they fall off the other. A FIFO is useful for buffering a stream of data between a sender and receiver which are not synchronised - i.e. not sending and receiving at exactly the same rate. Obviously if the rates differ by too much in one direction for too long then the FIFO will become either full (blocking the sender) or empty (blocking the receiver). A Unix pipe is a common example of a FIFO. A FIFO might be (but isn't ever?) called a LILO - last-in last-out. The opposite of a FIFO is a LIFO (last-in first-out) or "stack".
- fischer von erlach — Johann Bernhard [yaw-hahn bern-hahrt] /ˈyɔ hɑn ˈbɛrn hɑrt/ (Show IPA), 1656–1723, Austrian architect.
- fish and chip shop — In Britain, a fish and chip shop is a shop which sells hot food such as fish and chips, fried chicken, sausages, and meat pies. The food is cooked in the shop and people take it away to eat at home or in the street.
- fishing expedition — a legal proceeding mainly for the purpose of interrogating an adversary, or of examining his or her property and documents, in order to gain useful information.
- fissure of rolando — central sulcus.
- fissure of sylvius — lateral fissure.
- fitness instructor — physical trainer, exercise teacher
- fitzwilliam museum — a museum, attached to Cambridge University and founded in 1816, noted esp for its paintings and collections devoted to the applied arts
- fixed-focus camera — a camera with an unadjustable focal length and with a relatively large depth of field.
- fixed-radio access — Wireless Local Loop
- flash butt welding — a method of welding metal edge-to-edge with a powerful electric flash followed by the application of pressure.
- flat file database — (database) A database containing a single table, stored in a single flat file, often in a human-readable format such as comma-separated values or fixed-width columns.
- flat-panel display — a type of thin, lightweight video display that uses liquid crystals or electroluminescence to reflect images.
- fob shipping point — FOB shipping point is a shipping term indicating that ownership of goods passes when they are transferred to the carrier.
- forced perspective — the use of objects or images that are larger or smaller than they should be, to suggest that they are nearer or further away than they really are
- foreign investment — investment from foreign countries
- forensic chemistry — the application of facts concerning chemistry to questions of civil and criminal law.
- forensic scientist — science expert: provides evidence
- forwarding address — address for mail to be sent on
- foundling hospital — an institutional home for foundlings.
- fragile x syndrome — a widespread form of mental retardation caused by a faulty gene on the X chromosome.
- fragile-x syndrome — an inherited condition characterized by learning disability: affected individuals have an X-chromosome that is easily damaged under certain conditions
- francisco coronado — Francisco Vásquez de [frahn-thees-kaw bahs-keth th e,, frahn-sees-kaw bahs-kes] /frɑnˈθis kɔ ˈbɑs kɛθ ðɛ,, frɑnˈsis kɔ ˈbɑs kɛs/ (Show IPA), 1510–54? Spanish explorer in North America.
- frederick douglass — Frederick, 1817–95, U.S. ex-slave, abolitionist, and orator.
- french west africa — a former French federation in W Africa, including Dahomey (now Benin), French Guinea, French Sudan (now Mali), Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Upper Volta (now Burkina Fasso).
- french west indies — islands in the West Indies that belong to France, including two overseas departments (Martinique & Guadeloupe) & several former dependencies of Guadeloupe
- from first to last — all the way through