19-letter words containing n, s, f
- giovanni da fiesole — Giovanni da [Italian jaw-vahn-nee dah] /Italian dʒɔˈvɑn ni dɑ/ (Show IPA), Angelico, Fra.
- give a person a fit — to surprise a person in an outrageous manner
- go on the offensive — If you go on the offensive, go over to the offensive, or take the offensive, you begin to take strong action against people who have been attacking you.
- go out of one's way — manner, mode, or fashion: a new way of looking at a matter; to reply in a polite way.
- grandfather's chair — wing chair.
- grandfather's clock — a pendulum floor clock having a case as tall as or taller than a person; tall-case clock; long-case clock.
- greenhouse whitefly — See under whitefly.
- greenstick fracture — an incomplete fracture of a long bone, in which one side is broken and the other side is still intact.
- gross profit margin — A gross profit margin is a measure of the profitability of a company, that is calculated by dividing gross profit by net sales.
- grosse pointe farms — a city in SE Michigan, near Detroit.
- hang on the lips of — to listen to with close attention
- harbinger-of-spring — a North American umbelliferous herb, Erigenia bulbosa, having white flowers that bloom early in the spring.
- have a nose for sth — If you say that someone has a nose for something, you mean that they have a natural ability to find it or recognize it.
- have a weakness for — be fond of
- have the makings of — show potential as
- health professional — a person trained to work in any field of physical or mental health.
- heat of sublimation — the heat absorbed by one gram or unit mass of a substance in the process of changing, at a constant temperature and pressure, from a solid to a gaseous state. Compare sublime (def 10).
- helsinki conference — Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.
- hold no terrors for — If something holds no terrors for you, you are not at all frightened or worried by it.
- house of correction — a place for the confinement and reform of persons convicted of minor offenses and not regarded as confirmed criminals.
- house of councilors — the upper house of the Japanese diet.
- hyperfine structure — the splitting of the lines of an atomic spectrum, produced by the angular momentum of the nucleus of the atom.
- hyperfocal distance — the distance, at a given f number, between a camera lens and the nearest point (hyperfocal point) having satisfactory definition when focused at infinity.
- idea of pure reason — any of the three undemonstrable entities (a personal soul, a cosmos, and a supreme being) implicit in the fact of a subject and an object of knowledge, and in the need for some principle uniting them.
- if i'm not mistaken — You use expressions such as if I'm not mistaken and unless I'm very much mistaken as a polite way of emphasizing the statement you are making, especially when you are confident that it is correct.
- in consequence (of) — as a result (of)
- in consideration of — the act of considering; careful thought; meditation; deliberation: I will give your project full consideration.
- in the light of sth — If something is possible in the light of particular information, it is only possible because you have this information.
- in the person of sb — You can use in the person of when mentioning the name of someone you have just referred to in a more general or indirect way.
- indian paint fungus — a common woody hoof-shaped fungus, Echinodontium tinctorium, found on conifers in western North America and believed to have been used as a dye by Pacific Northwest Indians.
- infantile paralysis — poliomyelitis.
- inflationary spiral — Geometry. a plane curve generated by a point moving around a fixed point while constantly receding from or approaching it.
- informal settlement — a squatter camp
- information science — the study of the nature, collection, and management of information and of its uses, especially involving computer storage and retrievals.
- information service — a service which provides information
- interesterification — transesterification.
- interfacial tension — the surface tension at the interface of two liquids.
- invasion of privacy — an encroachment upon the right to be let alone or to be free from publicity.
- islet of langerhans — any of several masses of endocrine cells in the pancreas that secrete insulin, somatostatin, and glucagon.
- isthmus of san blas — the narrowest part of the Isthmus of Panama. Width: about 50 km (30 miles)
- italian east africa — a former Italian territory in E Africa, formed in 1936 by the merging of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland with newly conquered Ethiopia: taken by the British Imperial forces 1941.
- jacques montgolfier — Jacques Étienne [zhahk ey-tyen] /ʒɑk eɪˈtyɛn/ (Show IPA), 1745–99, and his brother Joseph Michel [zhaw-zef mee-shel] /ʒɔˈzɛf miˈʃɛl/ (Show IPA) 1740–1810, French aeronauts: inventors of the first practical balloon 1783.
- jockey for position — If someone is jockeying for position, they are using whatever methods they can in order to get into a better position than their rivals.
- juan de fuca strait — strait between Vancouver Island and NW Wash.: c. 100 mi (161 km) long
- knights of columbus — an international fraternal and benevolent organization of Roman Catholic men, founded in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1882.
- knock the socks off — to strike a sounding blow with the fist, knuckles, or anything hard, especially on a door, window, or the like, as in seeking admittance, calling attention, or giving a signal: to knock on the door before entering.
- ladies-of-the-night — plural of lady-of-the-night.
- languages of choice — C and Lisp. Nearly every hacker knows one of these, and most good ones are fluent in both. Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential communities. There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers with Fortran, or even assembler, as their language of choice. They often prefer to be known as Real Programmers, and other hackers consider them a bit odd (see "The Story of Mel"). Assembler is generally no longer considered interesting or appropriate for anything but HLL implementation, glue, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems programs. Fortran occupies a shrinking niche in scientific programming. Most hackers tend to frown on languages like Pascal and Ada, which don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for hacking (see bondage-and-discipline language), and to regard everything even remotely connected with COBOL or other traditional card walloper languages as a total and unmitigated loss.
- lay one's finger on — to indicate, identify, or locate accurately
- letters of credence — credentials issued to a diplomat or other governmental representative for presentation to the country to which he or she is sent.