18-letter words containing f, o, r, s
- chord of the sixth — sixth chord.
- christian reformed — of or relating to a Protestant denomination (Christian Reformed Church) organized in the U.S. in 1857 by groups that had seceded from the Dutch Reformed Church.
- church of scotland — the established church in Scotland, Calvinist in doctrine and Presbyterian in constitution
- colossus of rhodes — a giant bronze statue of Apollo built on Rhodes in about 292–280 bc; destroyed by an earthquake in 225 bc; one of the Seven Wonders of the World
- comb-footed spider — any of numerous spiders constituting the family Theridiidae, having a comblike row of bristles on the tarsi of the hind legs.
- combustion furnace — a furnace used in the laboratory to carry out elemental analysis of organic compounds
- congress of vienna — the European conference held at Vienna from 1814–15 to settle the territorial problems left by the Napoleonic Wars
- considered harmful — (programming, humour) A type of phrase based on the title of Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous note in the March 1968 Communications of the ACM, "Goto Statement Considered Harmful", which fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars. Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently harmful that it will (by policy) no longer print articles taking so assertive a position against a coding practice. In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and parodies bore titles of the form "X considered Y". The structured-programming wars eventually blew over with the realisation that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has remained as a persistent minor in-joke.
- constructive proof — (mathematics) A proof that something exists that provides an example or a method for actually constructing it. For example, for any pair of finite real numbers n < 0 and p > 0, there exists a real number 0 < k < 1 such that f(k) = (1-k)*n + k*p = 0. A constructive proof would proceed by rearranging the above to derive an equation for k: k = 1/(1-n/p) From this and the constraints on n and p, we can show that 0 < k < 1. A few mathematicians actually reject *all* non-constructive arguments as invalid; this means, for instance, that the law of the excluded middle (either P or not-P must hold, whatever P is) has to go; this makes proof by contradiction invalid. See intuitionistic logic. Constructive proofs are popular in theoretical computer science, both because computer scientists are less given to abstraction than mathematicians and because intuitionistic logic turns out to be an appropriate theoretical treatment of the foundations of computer science.
- corps of engineers — a branch of the U.S. Army responsible for military and many civil engineering projects.
- corridors of power — the higher echelons of government, the Civil Service, etc, considered as the location of power and influence
- court of st. james — the British royal court
- creme de framboise — a liqueur flavored with raspberries.
- crocodile-infested — full of crocodiles
- cultural diffusion — act of diffusing; state of being diffused.
- curvature of space — (in relativity) a property of space near massive bodies in which their gravitational field causes light to travel along curved paths.
- dangerous offender — an offender who is deemed by a court of law to be likely to engage in further violent conduct, and who thus becomes eligible for an indefinite prison sentence
- defense calculator — IBM 701
- degrees of freedom — the number of independent variables entering into a statistical measure or frequency distribution
- deliver oneself of — to speak with deliberation or at length
- diaminofluorescein — (organic compound) A fluorescein into which two amino groups have been substituted.
- division of labour — a system of organizing the manufacture of an article in a series of separate specialized operations, each of which is carried out by a different worker or group of workers
- due process of law — the administration of justice in accordance with established rules and principles
- duty-free shopping — the making of duty-free purchases
- dwarf storage unit — (humour) (DSU) An IBM term for a cupboard.
- eleanor of castile — 1246–90, Spanish wife of Edward I of England. Eleanor Crosses were erected at each place at which her body rested between Nottingham, where she died, and London, where she is buried
- excess profits tax — a tax on profits exceeding a certain amount
- fallot's tetralogy — a congenital heart disease in which there are four defects: pulmonary stenosis, enlarged right ventricle, a ventricular septal defect, and an aorta whose origin lies over the septal defect. In babies suffering this disease the defects can be corrected by surgery
- false imprisonment — the unlawful restraint of a person from exercising the right to freedom of movement.
- far eastern region — former name of Khabarovsk.
- 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.
- fast-food industry — the industry surrounding fast-food restaurants
- feast of orthodoxy — a solemn festival held on the first Sunday of Lent (Orthodoxy Sunday) commemorating the restoration of the use of icons in the church (a.d. 842) and the triumph over all heresies.
- feather one's nest — one of the horny structures forming the principal covering of birds, consisting typically of a hard, tubular portion attached to the body and tapering into a thinner, stemlike portion bearing a series of slender, barbed processes that interlock to form a flat structure on each side.
- feldenkrais method — a system of gentle movements that promote flexibility, coordination, and self-awareness
- fermat's last post — (humour) A post to a bug tracker, mailing list or forum in which the author claims to have found a simple fix or workaround for a bug, but never says what it is and never shows up again to explain it (even after others have been puzzling over the bug for years).
- fibrocartilaginous — a type of cartilage having a large number of fibers.
- 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-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.
- fissure of rolando — central sulcus.
- fissure of sylvius — lateral fissure.
- fitness instructor — physical trainer, exercise teacher
- fixed-focus camera — a camera with an unadjustable focal length and with a relatively large depth of field.
- fixed-radio access — Wireless Local Loop
- flowers of sulphur — minute crystals of sulphur obtained by condensing sulphur vapour on a cold surface