24-letter words containing f, o

see someone hanged first — to refuse absolutely to do what one has been asked
self-fulfilling prophecy — a prophecy that comes true because of the expectation that it will
senegambia confederation — an economic and political union (1982–89) between Senegal and The Gambia
serial interface adaptor — (SIA) The Ethernet driver chip used on a Filtabyte Ethernet card.
shadow foreign secretary — the member of the main opposition party in Parliament who would hold the office of Foreign Secretary if their party were in power
single transferable vote — of or relating to a system of voting in which voters list the candidates in order of preference. Any candidate achieving a predetermined proportion of the votes in a constituency is elected. Votes exceeding this amount and those cast for the bottom candidate are redistributed according to the stated preferences. Redistribution continues until all the seats are filled
sorrows of young werther — German Die Leiden des Jungen Werther. a romantic novel (1774) in epistolary form by Goethe.
standard housing benefit — a rebate of a proportion of a person's eligible housing costs paid by a local authority and calculated on the basis of level of income and family size
stratificational grammar — a grammar based upon the theory that language is made up of successive strata that are interconnected by established rules.
stratified random sample — a random sample of a population in which the population is first divided into distinct subpopulations, or strata, and random samples are then taken separately from each stratum.
structural functionalism — functionalism (def 3).
tagged image file format — (file format, graphics) (TIFF) A file format used for still-image bitmaps, stored in tagged fields. Application programs can use the tags to accept or ignore fields, depending on their capabilities. While TIFF was designed to be extensible, it lacked a core of useful functionality, so that most useful functions (e.g. lossless 24-bit colour) requires nonstandard, often redundant, extensions. The incompatibility of extensions has led some to expand "TIFF" as "Thousands of Incompatible File Formats". Compare GIF, PNG, JPEG.
take someone for granted — If you say that someone takes you for granted, you are complaining that they benefit from your help, efforts, or presence without showing that they are grateful.
tear someone off a strip — to rebuke (someone) angrily
telephony user interface — (communications) (TUI) Either a software interface to telephony (e.g. a phone-capable PC) or a DTMF-based interface to software (e.g. voicemail).
telescope user interface — (hardware, interface) (TUI) A remote control interface for a telescope.
the benefit of the doubt — If you give someone the benefit of the doubt, you treat them as if they are telling the truth or as if they have behaved properly, even though you are not sure that this is the case.
the department of health — a department of the government of the United Kingdom concerned with governmental policy relating to health in England but not elsewhere in the United Kingdom
the last of the mohicans — a historical novel (1826) by James Fenimore Cooper.
the official secrets act — an act of Parliament that covers the protection of information relating to state security
the proof of the pudding — If you say the proof of the pudding or the proof of the pudding is in the eating, you mean that something new can only be judged to be good or bad after it has been tried or used.
the ravages of something — the destructive effects of something
the realm of possibility — If you say that something is not beyond the realms of possibility, you mean that it is possible.
the red badge of courage — a novel (1895) by Stephen Crane.
the suffragette movement — a movement advocating of the extension of the franchise to women, as in Britain at the beginning of the 20th century
the villain of the piece — If you say that someone is the villain of the piece, you are saying in a slightly humorous way that they are seen by some people as the cause of all the trouble in a particular situation.
the wars of the diadochi — a series of conflicts between 321 and 281 bc, fought by six Macedonian generals who, after the death of Alexander the Great, desired control of his empire
think (all) the world of — to admire or love greatly
thorn in your side/flesh — If you describe someone or something as a thorn in your side or a thorn in your flesh, you mean that they are a continuous problem to you or annoy you.
to break the back of sth — If you break the back of a task or problem, you do the most difficult part of what is necessary to complete the task or solve the problem.
to change for the better — If something changes for the better, it improves.
to fight a losing battle — If you are fighting a losing battle, you are trying to achieve something but are not going to be successful.
to go for the brass ring — to try to succeed in an area where there is a lot of competition
to have egg on your face — If someone has egg on their face or has egg all over their face, they have been made to look foolish.
to make a break (for it) — If you make a break or make a break for it, you run to escape from something.
to make up for lost time — If someone is making up for lost time, they are doing something actively and with enthusiasm because they have not had the opportunity to do it before or when they were younger.
to set fire to something — If you set fire to something or if you set it on fire, you start it burning in order to damage or destroy it.
to speak well of someone — If you speak well of someone or speak highly of someone, you say good things about them. If you speak ill of someone, you criticize them.
to strike a blow for sth — If you strike a blow for a particular cause or principle, you do something that supports it or makes it more likely to succeed.
to tie yourself in knots — If you tie yourself in knots, you get very confused and anxious.
tools of one's/the trade — The tools of your trade or the tools of the trade are the skills, instruments, and other equipment that you need in order to do your job properly.
trading standards office — an office of the local authority department that deals with trading standards
transformational grammar — a system of grammatical analysis, especially a form of generative grammar, that posits the existence of deep structure and surface structure, using a set of transformational rules to derive surface structure forms from deep structure; a grammar that uses transformations to express the relations between equivalent structures.
tug/touch one's forelock — If you say that a person tugs their forelock to another person, you are criticizing them for showing too much respect to the second person or being unnecessarily worried about their opinions.
twenty-four-hour service — a banking service that is always available
two/three/four of a kind — If you refer, for example, to two, three, or four of a kind, you mean two, three, or four similar people or things that seem to go well or belong together.
under the sway of sb/sth — If you are under the sway of someone or something, they have great influence over you.
under-secretary of state — any of various high officials subordinate only to the minister in charge of a department
uniform resource locater — Uniform Resource Locator
uniform resource locator — (web) (URL, previously "Universal") A standard way of specifying the location of an object, typically a web page, on the Internet. Other types of object are described below. URLs are the form of address used on the World-Wide Web. They are used in HTML documents to specify the target of a hypertext link which is often another HTML document (possibly stored on another computer). Here are some example URLs: http://w3.org/default.html http://acme.co.uk:8080/images/map.gif http://foldoc.org/?Uniform+Resource+Locator http://w3.org/default.html#Introduction ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors/msdos/graphics/gifkit.zip ftp://spy:[email protected]/pub/topsecret/weapon.tgz mailto:[email protected] news:alt.hypertext telnet://dra.com The part before the first colon specifies the access scheme or protocol. Commonly implemented schemes include: ftp, http (web), gopher or WAIS. The "file" scheme should only be used to refer to a file on the same host. Other less commonly used schemes include news, telnet or mailto (e-mail). The part after the colon is interpreted according to the access scheme. In general, two slashes after the colon introduce a hostname (host:port is also valid, or for FTP user:[email protected] or [email protected]). The port number is usually omitted and defaults to the standard port for the scheme, e.g. port 80 for HTTP. For an HTTP or FTP URL the next part is a pathname which is usually related to the pathname of a file on the server. The file can contain any type of data but only certain types are interpreted directly by most browsers. These include HTML and images in gif or jpeg format. The file's type is given by a MIME type in the HTTP headers returned by the server, e.g. "text/html", "image/gif", and is usually also indicated by its filename extension. A file whose type is not recognised directly by the browser may be passed to an external "viewer" application, e.g. a sound player. The last (optional) part of the URL may be a query string preceded by "?" or a "fragment identifier" preceded by "#". The later indicates a particular position within the specified document. Only alphanumerics, reserved characters (:/?#"<>%+) used for their reserved purposes and "$", "-", "_", ".", "&", "+" are safe and may be transmitted unencoded. Other characters are encoded as a "%" followed by two hexadecimal digits. Space may also be encoded as "+". Standard SGML "&;" character entity encodings (e.g. "é") are also accepted when URLs are embedded in HTML. The terminating semicolon may be omitted if & is followed by a non-letter character.

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