18-letter words containing l, o, e, r
- 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.
- farm the long acre — to graze cows on the verge of a road
- farmer-labor party — a political party in Minnesota, founded in 1920 and merged with the Democratic Party in 1944.
- federal government — pertaining to or of the nature of a union of states under a central government distinct from the individual governments of the separate states, as in federal government; federal system.
- 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).
- ferrite-rod aerial — a type of aerial, normally used in radio reception, consisting of a small coil of wire mounted on a ferrite core, the coil serving as a tuning inductance
- fettuccine alfredo — fettuccine in cream sauce with grated Parmesan cheese.
- file control block — (operating system) (FCB) An MS-DOS data structure that stores information about an open file. The number of FCBs is configured in CONFIG.SYS with a command FCBS=x,y where x (between 1 and 255 inclusive, default 4) specifies the number of file control blocks to allocate and therefore the number of files that MS-DOS can have open at one time. y (not needed from DOS 5.0 onward) specifies the number of files to be closed automatically if all x are in use.
- fire in your belly — If you say that someone has fire in their belly, you are expressing approval of them because they are energetic, enthusiastic, and have very strong feelings.
- firecracker flower — a plant, Dichelostemma ida-maia, of the amaryllis family, native to California and Oregon, having clusters of tubular scarlet flowers.
- 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.
- 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.
- flat-bottomed rail — a rail having a cross section like an inverted T, with the top extremity enlarged slightly to form the head
- floating underflow — underflow
- floating-rate note — a eurobond, often issued as a negotiable bearer bond, that has a floating rate of interest
- flower arrangement — floral display
- flowers of sulphur — minute crystals of sulphur obtained by condensing sulphur vapour on a cold surface
- fluorescent screen — a transparent screen coated on one side with a phosphor that fluoresces when exposed to X-rays or cathode rays
- fluorodeoxyglucose — (carbohydrate) A fluorine analog of glucose that is used in positron emission tomography.
- football supporter — a person who supports a particular football team
- for the hell of it — the place or state of punishment of the wicked after death; the abode of evil and condemned spirits; Gehenna or Tartarus.
- for the life of me — If you say that you cannot for the life of you understand or remember something, you are emphasizing that you cannot understand or remember it, even if you try hard.
- forced development — the processing of underexposed photographic film to increase the image density
- forethoughtfulness — The condition of being forethoughtful.
- forget-me-not blue — a shade of blue similar to the shade of the flowers of a forget-me-not
- formal equivalence — the relation that holds between two open sentences when their universal closures are materially equivalent
- forward compatible — forward compatibility
- four-color problem — the problem, solved in 1976, of proving the theorem that any geographic map can be colored using only four colors so that no connected countries with a common boundary are colored the same color.
- four-legged friend — a four-legged animal, esp a dog
- fragile x syndrome — a widespread form of mental retardation caused by a faulty gene on the X chromosome.
- fragile-x syndrome — an inherited condition characterized by learning disability: affected individuals have an X-chromosome that is easily damaged under certain conditions
- frederick douglass — Frederick, 1817–95, U.S. ex-slave, abolitionist, and orator.
- free-range poultry — poultry kept in natural nonintensive conditions
- free-will offering — a voluntary religious contribution made in addition to what may be expected or required.
- fringe-toed lizard — an iguanid lizard, Uma notata, of sandy deserts of the western U.S. and Mexico, having a wedge-shaped snout and toes fringed with long, pointed scales.
- fuller rose beetle — a beetle, Pantomorus godmani, that feeds on the leaves of roses as well as on those of citrus and other fruit trees.
- fulminating powder — powder that explodes by percussion.
- funeral procession — ceremonial cortège at a burial
- gabriele dannunzio — Gabriele [Italian gah-bree-e-le] /Italian ˌgɑ briˈɛ lɛ/ (Show IPA), (Duca Minimo) 1863–1938, Italian soldier, novelist, and poet.
- gamblers anonymous — an organization that holds group meetings to help people who are addicted to gambling
- garbage collection — (programming) (GC) The process by which dynamically allocated storage is reclaimed during the execution of a program. The term usually refers to automatic periodic storage reclamation by the garbage collector (part of the run-time system), as opposed to explicit code to free specific blocks of memory. Automatic garbage collection is usually triggered during memory allocation when the amount free memory falls below some threshold or after a certain number of allocations. Normal execution is suspended and the garbage collector is run. There are many variations on this basic scheme. Languages like Lisp represent expressions as graphs built from cells which contain pointers and data. These languages use automatic dynamic storage allocation to build expressions. During the evaluation of an expression it is necessary to reclaim space which is used by subexpressions but which is no longer pointed to by anything. This reclaimed memory is returned to the free memory pool for subsequent reallocation. Without garbage collection the program's memory requirements would increase monotonically throughout execution, possibly exceeding system limits on virtual memory size. The three main methods are mark-sweep garbage collection, reference counting and copying garbage collection. See also the AI koan about garbage collection.
- garden loosestrife — any of various plants belonging to the genus Lysimachia, of the primrose family, having clusters of usually yellow flowers, as L. vulgaris (garden loosestrife) or L. quadrifolia (whorled loosestrife)
- gas-cooled reactor — a nuclear reactor using a gas as the coolant. In the Mark I type the coolant is carbon dioxide, the moderator is graphite, and the fuel is uranium cased in magnox
- gastroenterologist — the study of the structure, functions, and diseases of digestive organs.
- general confession — a prayer confessing sins
- general contractor — a person who contracts to construct a building or buildings, for a stipulated sum, in accordance with certain plans and specifications, or to remodel or build an addition to a building
- general precession — the precession that results from both lunisolar precession and planetary precession; precession of the equinoxes.