16-letter words containing f, l, u, c
- quick as a flash — If you say that someone reacts to something quick as a flash, you mean that they react to it extremely quickly.
- refuse collector — someone who collects of rubbish and waste, usually in a rubbish or refuse truck, before final disposal
- safeguard clause — a clause in a contract, etc, that ensures the protection of something against problems, etc
- self-consequence — self-important character or quality; self-importance.
- self-constituted — constituted as such by oneself or itself
- self-consumption — the act of consuming, as by use, decay, or destruction.
- self-cultivation — the act or art of cultivating.
- self-destruction — the destruction or ruination of oneself or one's life.
- self-destructive — harmful, injurious, or destructive to oneself: His constant arguing with the boss shows he's a self-destructive person.
- self-exculpatory — intended to excuse oneself from blame or guilt
- self-lubricating — to apply some oily or greasy substance to (a machine, parts of a mechanism, etc.) in order to diminish friction; oil or grease (something).
- self-lubrication — the process of becoming lubricated without external factors
- self-preoccupied — preoccupied by one's own concerns
- self-pronouncing — having the pronunciation indicated, especially by diacritical marks added on original spellings rather than by phonetic symbols: a self-pronouncing dictionary.
- self-reproducing — to make a copy, representation, duplicate, or close imitation of: to reproduce a picture.
- self-resourceful — able to deal skillfully and promptly with new situations, difficulties, etc.
- self-subsistence — the state or fact of subsisting.
- self-sufficiency — able to supply one's own or its own needs without external assistance: The nation grows enough grain to be self-sufficient.
- self-vulcanizing — to treat (rubber) with sulfur and heat, thereby imparting strength, greater elasticity, durability, etc.
- smelting furnace — an industrial oven used to heat ore in order to extract metal
- specific impulse — a measure, usually in seconds, of the efficiency with which a rocket engine utilizes its propellants, equal to the number of pounds of thrust produced per pound of propellant burned per second.
- sulfocarbanilide — thiocarbanilide.
- superficialities — being at, on, or near the surface: a superficial wound.
- surface integral — the limit, as the norm of the partition of a given surface into sections of area approaches zero, of the sum of the product of the areas times the value of a given function of three variables at some point on each section.
- sutton coldfield — a town in central England, in Birmingham unitary authority, West Midlands; a residential suburb of Birmingham. Pop: 105 452 (2001)
- the first couple — the US president and their spouse
- trailing fuchsia — a shrub, Fuchsia procumbens, of the evening primrose family, native to New Zealand, having long-stalked leaves and drooping, orange-and-purple flowers, used in hanging baskets.
- twofold purchase — a purchase using a double standing block and a double running block so as to give a mechanical advantage of four or five, neglecting friction, depending on whether the hauling is on the standing block or the running block.
- unconfirmability — to establish the truth, accuracy, validity, or genuineness of; corroborate; verify: This report confirms my suspicions.
- unenforceability — to put or keep in force; compel obedience to: to enforce a rule; Traffic laws will be strictly enforced.
- utility function — a function relating specific goods and services in an economy to individual preferences
- visual interface — (tool, text) (vi) /V-I/, /vi:/, *never* /siks/ A screen editor crufted together by Bill Joy for an early BSD release. vi became the de facto standard Unix editor and a nearly undisputed hacker favourite outside of MIT until the rise of Emacs after about 1984. It tends to frustrate new users no end, as it will neither take commands while expecting input text nor vice versa, and the default setup provides no indication of which mode the editor is in (one correspondent accordingly reports that he has often heard the editor's name pronounced /vi:l/). Nevertheless it is still widely used (about half the respondents in a 1991 Usenet poll preferred it), and even some Emacs fans resort to it as a mail editor and for small editing jobs (mainly because it starts up faster than the bulkier versions of Emacs). See holy wars.
- vulcanized fiber — a leatherlike substance made by compression of layers of paper or cloth that have been treated with acids or zinc chloride, used chiefly for electric insulation.
- well-functioning — the kind of action or activity proper to a person, thing, or institution; the purpose for which something is designed or exists; role.