16-letter words containing f, r, a, n, c
- configurationism — Gestalt psychology
- confrontationist — a person who confronts opposition, especially aggressively.
- congo free state — a former name of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
- contour feathers — feathers that form the surface plumage of a bird and determine the outer contour, including the wing and tail feathers
- control freakery — an obsessive need to be in control of what is happening
- coreferentiality — (of two words or phrases) having reference to the same person or thing.
- corned beef hash — a dish consisting of corned beef chopped and mixed together with mashed potatoes and various other ingredients, then fried
- counterfactually — a conditional statement the first clause of which expresses something contrary to fact, as “If I had known.”.
- course of action — a way of proceeding
- cracked fraction — A cracked fraction is a petroleum fraction (= a portion separated according to a physical property) that has been broken down from a fraction with larger molecules.
- craftspersonship — The body of activities, skills, techniques, knowledge, and expertise pertinent to (a) particular craft(s).
- cream of coconut — coconut cream (def 1).
- cream-of-coconut — Also called cream of coconut. a creamy white liquid skimmed from the top of coconut milk that has been made by soaking grated coconut meat in water, used in East Indian cookery, mixed drinks, etc.
- crime of passion — a crime, often a murder, committed from passion, esp sexual passion
- criminal offence — an action which is punishable under the law
- croydon facelift — the tightening effect on the skin of a woman's face caused by securing the hair at the back of the head in a tight ponytail
- darwin's finches — the finches of the subfamily Geospizinae of the Galapagos Islands, showing great variation in bill structure and feeding habits: provided Darwin with evidence to support his theory of evolution
- day of reckoning — If someone talks about the day of reckoning, they mean a day or time in the future when people will be forced to deal with an unpleasant situation which they have avoided until now.
- deboursification — (jargon) Removal of irrelevant newsgroups from the Newsgroups header of a followup. The term applies particularly to the removal of frivolous groups added by one of the Kooks. See also: sneck.
- decimal fraction — a fraction whose denominator is some power of 10, usually indicated by a dot (decimal point or point) written before the numerator: as 0.4 = 4/10; 0.126 = 126/1000.
- definite article — The word 'the' is sometimes called the definite article.
- dictionary flame — [Usenet] An attempt to sidetrack a debate away from issues by insisting on meanings for key terms that presuppose a desired conclusion or smuggle in an implicit premise. A common tactic of people who prefer argument over definitions to disputes about reality. Compare spelling flame.
- disenfranchising — Present participle of disenfranchise.
- disfranchisement — to deprive (a person) of a right of citizenship, as of the right to vote.
- diversifications — Plural form of diversification.
- documentary film — factual, informative film
- dolce far niente — pleasing inactivity.
- dorothy canfield — Dorothy, Fisher, Dorothy Canfield.
- drag coefficient — a measure of the drag of an object in a moving fluid, esp air
- drug trafficking — smuggling illegal drugs
- electric furnace — any furnace in which the heat is provided by an electric current
- electronic flash — Photography
- extrinsic factor — vitamin B12
- face recognition — the ability of a computer to scan, store, and recognize human faces for use in identifying people
- facial neuralgia — paroxysmal darting pain and muscular twitching in the face, evoked by rubbing certain points of the face.
- fahrenheit scale — Gabriel Daniel [German gah-bree-el dah-nee-el] /German ˈgɑ briˌɛl ˈdɑ niˌɛl/ (Show IPA), 1686–1736, German physicist: devised a temperature scale and introduced the use of mercury in thermometers.
- fancy dress ball — a ball at which the guests wear fancy dress
- fandango on core — (jargon, programming) (Unix/C, from the Mexican dance) In C, a wild pointer that runs out of bounds, causing a core dump, or corrupts the malloc arena in such a way as to cause mysterious failures later on, is sometimes said to have "done a fandango on core". On low-end personal machines without an MMU, this can corrupt the operating system itself, causing massive lossage. Other frenetic dances such as the rhumba, cha-cha, or watusi, may be substituted. See aliasing bug, precedence lossage, smash the stack, memory leak, memory smash, overrun screw, core.
- father confessor — confessor (def 2).
- feather merchant — a person who avoids responsibility and effort; loafer.
- feedback control — (electronics) A control system which monitors its effect on the system it is controlling and modifies its output accordingly. For example, a thermostat has two inputs: the desired temperature and the current temperature (the latter is the feedback). The output of the thermostat changes so as to try to equalise the two inputs. Computer disk drives use feedback control to position the read/write heads accurately on a recording track. Complex systems such as the human body contain many feedback systems that interact with each other; the homeostasis mechanisms that control body temperature and acidity are good examples.
- feel constrained — If you feel constrained to do something, you feel that you must do it, even though you would prefer not to.
- feeping creature — [feeping creaturism] An unnecessary feature; a bit of chrome that, in the speaker's judgment, is the camel's nose for a whole horde of new features.
- feminine caesura — a caesura occurring immediately after an unstressed or short syllable.
- ferdinand marcos — Ferdinand E(dralin) [ed-ruh-lin] /ˈɛd rə lɪn/ (Show IPA), 1917–1989, Philippine political leader: president 1965–86.
- ferricyanic acid — a brown, crystalline, unstable, water-soluble solid, H 3 Fe(CN) 6 , obtained by the interaction of a ferricyanide and an acid.
- ferrocyanic acid — a white, crystalline, unstable, water-soluble solid, H 4 Fe(CN) 6 , obtained by the interaction of a ferrocyanide and an acid.
- feulgen reaction — a reaction in which an aldehyde combines with a modified Schiff's reagent to produce a purplish compound: used especially to test for the presence of DNA
- fibonacci number — a number in the Fibonacci sequence, each of which is the sum of the previous two
- fibonacci series — a sequence of integers in which each integer (Fibonacci number) after the second is the sum of the two preceding integers; specif., the series 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, . . .