18-letter words containing m, i, f
- economies of scale — Economies of scale are the financial advantages that a company gains when it produces large quantities of products.
- enforcement action — action by a body or organization, esp a financial one, to make sure that its rules are being followed
- false imprisonment — the unlawful restraint of a person from exercising the right to freedom of movement.
- family-size packet — a packet large enough to be suitable for a family
- family-tree theory — a theory that describes language change in terms of genetically related languages developing in successive splits from a common parent language, such as Indo-European, as depicted by a family tree diagram.
- farmer in the dell — a game, accompanied by a song with several verses, in which one person, designated as the farmer, occupies the center of a circle of persons and is joined in the circle by other players designated as wife, child, nurse, cat, rat, and cheese, these then leaving the circle in order except for the one designated as cheese, who is left standing alone in the circle at the end.
- fascicular cambium — cambium that develops within the vascular bundles, producing secondary xylem and phloem.
- feeping creaturism — /fee'ping kree"ch*r-izm/ A deliberate spoonerism for creeping featurism, meant to imply that the system or program in question has become a misshapen creature of hacks. This term isn"t really well defined, but it sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. It is probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in the dark making their customary noises.
- feldenkrais method — a system of gentle movements that promote flexibility, coordination, and self-awareness
- ferdinand magellan — Ferdinand, c1480–1521, Portuguese navigator: discoverer of the Straits of Magellan 1520 and the Philippines 1521.
- fermat's principle — Optics. the law that the path taken by a ray of light in going from one point to another point will be the path that requires the least time.
- fifth monarchy men — (during the Commonwealth in the 17th century) a militant sect of Puritans who identified the fifth monarchy with the millennial reign of Christ and who believed they should help to inaugurate that reign by force.
- filename extension — (filename extension) The portion of a filename, following the final point, which indicates the kind of data stored in the file - the file type. Many operating systems use filename extensions, e.g. Unix, VMS, MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows. They are usually from one to three letters (some sad old OSes support no more than three). Examples include "c" for C source code, "ps" for PostScript, "txt" for arbitrary text. Apart from informing the user what type of content the file holds, filename extensions are typically used to decide which program to launch when a file is "run", e.g. by double-clicking it in a GUI file browser. They are also used by Unix's make to determine how to build one kind of file from another. Compare: MIME type.
- fill someone in on — to provide someone with additional facts, details, etc. about
- finite-dimensional — (of a vector space) having a basis consisting of a finite number of elements.
- fire and brimstone — When people talk about fire and brimstone, they are referring to hell and how they think people are punished there after death.
- fire-and-brimstone — threatening punishment in the hereafter: a fire-and-brimstone sermon.
- first and foremost — primarily
- 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.
- fitzwilliam museum — a museum, attached to Cambridge University and founded in 1816, noted esp for its paintings and collections devoted to the applied arts
- five hundred rummy — a variety of rummy in which the winner is the first player to score 500 points.
- fixed-focus camera — a camera with an unadjustable focal length and with a relatively large depth of field.
- fixed-term tenancy — a tenancy arrangement for a particular and fixed period
- flat-bottomed rail — a rail having a cross section like an inverted T, with the top extremity enlarged slightly to form the head
- 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.
- for the time being — the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.
- foreign investment — investment from foreign countries
- forensic chemistry — the application of facts concerning chemistry to questions of civil and criminal law.
- formal equivalence — the relation that holds between two open sentences when their universal closures are materially equivalent
- forward compatible — forward compatibility
- foundation garment — an undergarment, as a girdle or corset, worn by women to support or give shape to the contours of the body.
- 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
- fragmentation bomb — a bomb designed to break into many small, high-velocity fragments when detonated.
- from first to last — all the way through
- fulminating powder — powder that explodes by percussion.
- fuming nitric acid — a colorless, yellowish, or brownish fuming corrosive liquid, usually prepared from nitric acid by the addition of excess nitrogen dioxide: used in organic synthesis for nitration, and as an oxidizer in liquid propellants for rockets.
- functional program — (language) A program employing the functional programming approach or written in a functional language.
- gainful employment — an occupation that pays an income
- gene amplification — an increase in the frequency of replication of a DNA segment.
- german east africa — a former German territory in E Africa, the area now comprised of continental Tanzania and the independent republics of Rwanda and Burundi.
- government deficit — A government deficit is a situation in which a government spends more money than it has.
- grist for the mill — If you say that something is grist for the mill, you mean that it is useful for a particular purpose or helps support someone's point of view.
- haemorrhagic fever — any of a group of fevers, such as Ebola virus disease and yellow fever, characterized by internal bleeding or bleeding into the skin
- heat of combustion — the heat evolved when one mole of a substance is burnt in oxygen at constant volume
- helmholtz function — the thermodynamic function of a system that is equal to its internal energy minus the product of its absolute temperature and entropy: A decrease in the function is equal to the maximum amount of work available during a reversible isothermal process.
- home of the hirsel — Baron, title of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, formerly 14th Earl of Home. 1903–95, British Conservative statesman: he renounced his earldom to become prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1963–64); foreign secretary (1970–74)
- honeysuckle family — the plant family Caprifoliaceae, typified by shrubs and woody vines having opposite leaves, clusters of usually flaring, narrow, tubular flowers, and various types of fruit, and including the elder, honeysuckle, snowberry, twinflower, and viburnum.
- hydroflumethiazide — A diuretic drug.
- i'll eat my hat if — I will be greatly surprised if (something happens that proves me wrong)