20-letter words containing h, a
- force someone's hand — to force someone to act
- forty-ninth parallel — an informal name for the Canadian border with the USA, which is in part delineated by the parallel line of latitude at 49°N
- fourteenth amendment — an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1868, defining national citizenship and forbidding the states to restrict the basic rights of citizens or other persons.
- fourth international — a loose federation of small groups of radical socialists formed in 1936 under the leadership of Leon Trotsky and hostile to the Soviet Union. Compare international (def 6).
- frame check sequence — (communications) (FCS) The extra characters added to a frame for error detection and correction(?). FCS is used in X.25, HDLC, Frame Relay, and other data link layer protocols.
- frankfurt horizontal — Craniometry. the plane established when right and left poria and left orbitale are in the same horizontal plane.
- freefall parachuting — a variety of parachuting in which the jumper manoeuvres in free fall before opening the parachute
- freight pass-through — a special allowance or discounted price given a bookseller or bookstore by a publishing house for paying the freight charge on a shipment of books ordered: so called because the shipping charge is passed on to the consumer by an increase in the suggested retail price for each book. Abbreviation: FPT.
- friar minor capuchin — capuchin (def 4).
- friedrich max müller — Friedrich Max [free-drik maks;; German free-drikh mahks] /ˈfri drɪk mæks;; German ˈfri drɪx mɑks/ (Show IPA), 1823–1900, English Sanskrit scholar and philologist born in Germany.
- friends of the earth — an organization of environmentalists and conservationists whose aim is to promote the sustainable use of the earth's resources
- frosting on the cake — a sweet mixture, cooked or uncooked, for coating or filling cakes, cookies, and the like; icing.
- full to the gunwales — completely full; full to overflowing
- fundamental research — research carried out to deepen understanding of the fundamental or basic principles of something
- gaff-topsail catfish — a sea catfish, Bagre marinus, occurring in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico from Cape Cod to Panama, and having the spine of the dorsal fin greatly prolonged and flattened.
- general headquarters — the headquarters of the commanding officer of a large military force. Abbreviation: GHQ, G.H.Q.
- generative phonology — a theory of phonology that uses a set of rules to derive phonetic representations from abstract underlying forms.
- get ahold of oneself — If you get ahold of yourself, you force yourself to become calm and sensible after a shock or in a difficult situation.
- get away with murder — Law. the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law. In the U.S., special statutory definitions include murder committed with malice aforethought, characterized by deliberation or premeditation or occurring during the commission of another serious crime, as robbery or arson (first-degree murder) and murder by intent but without deliberation or premeditation (second-degree murder)
- get one's hackles up — to become tense with anger; bristle
- gingival hyperplasia — Gingival hyperplasia is abnormal enlargement of the gums.
- give a wide berth to — to keep clear of; avoid
- give one's right arm — to be prepared to make any sacrifice
- give someone the air — a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, and minute amounts of other gases that surrounds the earth and forms its atmosphere.
- glucosamine sulphate — a compound used in some herbal remedies and dietary supplements, esp to strengthen joint cartilage
- go against the grain — If you say that an idea or action goes against the grain, you mean that it is very difficult for you to accept it or do it, because it conflicts with your previous ideas, beliefs, or principles.
- go like the clappers — to move extremely fast
- go to someone's head — to confuse, excite, or intoxicate someone
- goldenhar's syndrome — a congenital disorder in which one side of the face is malformed, often with an enlargement of one side of the mouth. There may also be hearing loss, curvature of the spine, and mild retardation
- grade school teacher — a teacher in a grade school
- grand right and left — a figure called in square dancing in which partners face each other, forming a small circle, and then advance around the circle by extending alternating right and left hands to pull past each new person until they reach their partners again.
- grand unified theory — a possible future quantum field theory that would encompass both the electroweak theory and quantum chromodynamics. Abbreviation: GUT.
- graphics accelerator — (graphics, hardware) Hardware (often an extra circuit board) to perform tasks such as plotting lines and surfaces in two or three dimensions, filling, shading and hidden line removal.
- great northern diver — a large northern bird, Gavia immer, with a black-and-white chequered back and a black head and neck in summer: family Gaviidae (divers)
- greenwich hour angle — hour angle measured from the meridian of Greenwich, England.
- grievous bodily harm — law: serious injury
- guarded horn clauses — (language) (GHC) A parallel dialect of Prolog by K. Ueda in which each clause has a guard. GHC is similar to Parlog. When several clauses match a goal, their guards are evaluated in parallel and the first clause whose guard is found to be true is used and others are rejected. It uses committed-choice nondeterminism. See also FGHC, KL1.
- guillaume de machaut — Guillaume de [French gee-yohm duh] /French giˈyoʊm də/ (Show IPA), Guillaume de Machaut.
- hail-fellow-well-met — friendly but insincere
- hampton court palace — a royal palace in Hampton, London, built in 1515 by Cardinal Wolsey
- hang up one's spikes — to retire, as from a professional sport
- happy hunting ground — the North American Indian heaven, conceived of as a paradise of hunting and feasting for warriors and hunters.
- hard gelatin capsule — A hard gelatin capsule is a type of capsule that is usually used to contain medicine in the form of dry powder or very small pellets.
- hardware handshaking — (communications) A technique for regulating the flow of data across an interface by means of signals carried on separate wires. A common example is the RTS (Request to Send) and CTS (Clear to Send) signals on an EIA-232 serial line. The alternative, software handshaking, uses two special characters inserted into the data stream to carry the same information.
- harmonic minor scale — minor scale (def 1).
- harmonic progression — a series of numbers the reciprocals of which are in arithmetic progression.
- harvard architecture — (architecture) A computer architecture in which program instructions are stored in different memory from data. Each type of memory is accessed via a separate bus, allowing instructions and data to be fetched in parallel. Contrast: von Neumann architecture.
- hate a person's guts — to dislike a person very strongly
- have an itching palm — to desire money greedily
- have come a long way — If you say that someone or something has come a long way, you mean that they have developed, progressed, or become very successful.