19-letter words containing f, o, s
- interfacial tension — the surface tension at the interface of two liquids.
- invasion of privacy — an encroachment upon the right to be let alone or to be free from publicity.
- isidorus of miletus — flourished 6th century a.d, Byzantine engineer. He was one of the architects of Hagia Sophia; (originally an Orthodox cathedral and currently a museum in Istanbul, Turkey).
- isle of shoals boat — a sailing boat formerly used in Ipswich Bay, Massachusetts, rigged with two spritsails or gaff sails.
- islet of langerhans — any of several masses of endocrine cells in the pancreas that secrete insulin, somatostatin, and glucagon.
- isthmus of san blas — the narrowest part of the Isthmus of Panama. Width: about 50 km (30 miles)
- jacques montgolfier — Jacques Étienne [zhahk ey-tyen] /ʒɑk eɪˈtyɛn/ (Show IPA), 1745–99, and his brother Joseph Michel [zhaw-zef mee-shel] /ʒɔˈzɛf miˈʃɛl/ (Show IPA) 1740–1810, French aeronauts: inventors of the first practical balloon 1783.
- jockey for position — If someone is jockeying for position, they are using whatever methods they can in order to get into a better position than their rivals.
- joseph of arimathea — a wealthy disciple who provided a tomb for Jesus' body: Matt. 27:57-60
- knights of columbus — an international fraternal and benevolent organization of Roman Catholic men, founded in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1882.
- knock the socks off — to strike a sounding blow with the fist, knuckles, or anything hard, especially on a door, window, or the like, as in seeking admittance, calling attention, or giving a signal: to knock on the door before entering.
- ladies-of-the-night — plural of lady-of-the-night.
- languages of choice — C and Lisp. Nearly every hacker knows one of these, and most good ones are fluent in both. Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential communities. There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers with Fortran, or even assembler, as their language of choice. They often prefer to be known as Real Programmers, and other hackers consider them a bit odd (see "The Story of Mel"). Assembler is generally no longer considered interesting or appropriate for anything but HLL implementation, glue, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems programs. Fortran occupies a shrinking niche in scientific programming. Most hackers tend to frown on languages like Pascal and Ada, which don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for hacking (see bondage-and-discipline language), and to regard everything even remotely connected with COBOL or other traditional card walloper languages as a total and unmitigated loss.
- lay one's finger on — to indicate, identify, or locate accurately
- letters of credence — credentials issued to a diplomat or other governmental representative for presentation to the country to which he or she is sent.
- library of congress — one of the major library collections in the world, located in Washington, D.C., and functioning in some ways as the national library of the U.S. although not officially designated as such: established by Congress in 1800 for service to its members, but now also serving government agencies, other libraries, and the public.
- life-support system — A life-support system is the same as a life-support machine.
- lift up one's voice — to speak out loudly
- limit of resolution — the capacity of an optical system to resolve point objects as separate images.
- line-of-battle ship — ship of the line.
- live one's own life — If you live your own life, you live in the way that you want to and accept responsibility for your actions and decisions, without other people's advice or interference.
- logical shift right — logical shift
- look (like) oneself — to appear to be in normal health, spirits, etc.
- lose in the shuffle — to leave out or disregard in the confusion of things
- loss-of-containment — Loss-of-containment happens when a fluid which is usually contained somewhere escapes from that place.
- love at first sight — instant romantic attraction to sb
- low insertion force — (hardware) (LIF) PGA/SPGA sockets with no handle. The integrated circuit is simply pushed into the socket, and levered out to remove. Most motherboard processor sockets are now ZIF rather than LIF.
- luminous efficiency — the perceived brightness of light as a ratio of the total luminous flux to total radiant flux of the source; a measure of brightness obtained by dividing the source's luminous flux by the consumption of its energy.
- lyon office of arms — Heralds' Office.
- make a pig's ear of — to ruin disastrously
- make oneself scarce — insufficient to satisfy the need or demand; not abundant: Meat and butter were scarce during the war.
- make the best of it — cope
- malicious falsehood — a lie told by someone who knows the lie is false or knows it will do harm to the person it is concerning
- mary wollstonecraft — Mary (Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) 1759–97, English author and feminist (mother of Mary Shelley).
- master of foxhounds — the person responsible for the conduct of a fox hunt and to whom all members of the hunt and its staff are responsible. Abbreviation: M.F.H.
- master of the horse — (in England) the third official of the royal household
- master of the rolls — (in England and Wales) the judge who presides over the Court of Appeal (Civil Division) and who was formerly Keeper of the Records at the Public Record Office
- means of production — resources: equipment, workers
- measure for measure — a comedy (1604) by Shakespeare.
- membership function — fuzzy subset
- menominee whitefish — round whitefish.
- ministry of defence — the government department responsible for the country's military measures or resources
- miracle of st. mark — a painting (1548) by Tintoretto.
- modulus of rigidity — shear modulus.
- most favored nation — a nation to which privileges of trade are extended under a government policy of giving the same privileges to all nations that are given to any one of them, sometimes depending on whether certain conditions, as of reciprocity, are met
- most-favored-nation — of or relating to the status, treatment, terms, etc., that are embodied in or conferred by a most-favored-nation clause.
- mother-of-thousands — strawberry geranium.
- moving spirit/force — The moving spirit or moving force behind something is the person or thing that caused it to start and to keep going, or that influenced people to take part in it.
- nasty piece of work — malicious person
- network file system — (networking, operating system) (NFS) A protocol developed by Sun Microsystems, and defined in RFC 1094, which allows a computer to access files over a network as if they were on its local disks. This protocol has been incorporated in products by more than two hundred companies, and is now a de facto standard. NFS is implemented using a connectionless protocol (UDP) in order to make it stateless. See Nightmare File System, WebNFS.