15-letter words containing o, e, a
- fall cankerworm — the striped, green caterpillar of any of several geometrid moths: a foliage pest of various fruit and shade trees, as Paleacrita vernata (spring cankerworm) and Alsophila pometaria (fall cankerworm)
- fall from grace — elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action: We watched her skate with effortless grace across the ice. Synonyms: attractiveness, charm, gracefulness, comeliness, ease, lissomeness, fluidity. Antonyms: stiffness, ugliness, awkwardness, clumsiness; klutziness.
- fallopian tubes — one of a pair of long, slender ducts in the female abdomen that transport ova from the ovary to the uterus and, in fertilization, transport sperm cells from the uterus to the released ova; the oviduct of higher mammals.
- fallout shelter — protective bunker
- false buckthorn — a spiny shrub or small tree, Bumelia lanuginosa, of the sapodilla family, native to the southern U.S., having gummy, milky sap and white, bell-shaped flowers and yielding a hard, light-brown wood.
- false hellebore — any of various plants belonging to the genus Veratrum, of the lily family, especially a North American species, V. viride, which has clusters of yellowish-green flowers and is the source of substances used in certain medicines and insecticides.
- false miterwort — foamflower.
- family skeleton — a closely guarded family secret
- fanconi anaemia — a rare genetic disorder that can cause bone marrow failure, leukaemia, and tumours
- fashionableness — The state of being fashionable; stylishness; elegance.
- fatal exception — (programming, operating system) A program execution error which is trapped by the operating system and which results in abrupt termination of the program. It may be possible for the program to catch some such errors, e.g. a floating point underflow; others, such as an invalid memory access (an attempt to write to read-only memory or an attempt to read memory outside of the program's address space), may always cause control to pass to the operating system without allowing the program an opportunity to handle the error. The details depend on the language's run-time system and the operating system. See also: fatal error.
- fault tolerance — (architecture) 1. The ability of a system or component to continue normal operation despite the presence of hardware or software faults. This often involves some degree of redundancy. 2. The number of faults a system or component can withstand before normal operation is impaired.
- fauntleroy suit — a formal outfit for a boy composed of a hip-length jacket and knee-length pants, often in black velvet, and a wide, lacy collar and cuffs, usually worn with a broad sash at the waist and sometimes a large, loose bow at the neck, popular in the late 19th century.
- feast of lights — Hanukkah.
- feast or famine — characterized by alternating, extremely high and low degrees of prosperity, success, volume of business, etc.: artists who lead a feast-or-famine life.
- feast-or-famine — characterized by alternating, extremely high and low degrees of prosperity, success, volume of business, etc.: artists who lead a feast-or-famine life.
- federal holiday — a day which is a national holiday at the behest of the Federal Government
- feel one's oats — a cereal grass, Avena sativa, cultivated for its edible seed.
- feelgood factor — When journalists refer to the feelgood factor, they mean that people are feeling hopeful and optimistic about the future.
- fellow creature — a kindred creature, especially a fellow human being.
- fellow traveler — a person who supports or sympathizes with a political party, especially the Communist Party, but is not an enrolled member.
- ferroelasticity — (physics) A phenomenon, analogous to ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity, in which spontaneous strain arises within a material.
- ferrous sulfate — a bluish-green, crystalline, saline-tasting, water-soluble heptahydrated solid, FeSO 4 ⋅7H 2 O, used chiefly in the manufacture of other iron salts, in water purification, fertilizer, inks, pigments, tanning, photography, and in medicine in the treatment of anemia.
- fetal diagnosis — prenatal determination of genetic or chemical abnormalities in a fetus, esp by amniocentesis
- fibrocartilages — Plural form of fibrocartilage.
- fideicommissary — the recipient of a fideicommissum.
- fiesta de toros — a bullfight; corrida.
- fighter command — a former unit of the Royal Air Force dedicated to the use of fighter aircraft, esp against enemy bombers and their escorts during WWII
- finance company — an institution engaged in such specialized forms of financing as purchasing accounts receivable, extending credit to retailers and manufacturers, discounting installment contracts, and granting loans with goods as security.
- finite automata — Finite State Machine
- fire water pond — A fire water pond is an area of water which is kept so it can be used if there is a fire.
- fire-and-forget — used to describe a type of missile that, once fired, is able to guide itself to its target
- first-day cover — a cover marked so as to indicate that it was mailed on the first day of issue of the stamp it bears and from one of the cities at which the stamp was issued on that day.
- fission reactor — a nuclear reactor in which a fission reaction takes place
- fissiparousness — The quality of being fissiparous.
- five-star hotel — a top-quality hotel offering exceptional luxury
- flamingo-flower — a central American plant, Anthurium scherzeranum, of the arum family, having a red, coiled spadix and a bright red, shiny, heart-shaped spathe, grown as an ornamental.
- flange coupling — a driving coupling between rotating shafts that consists of flanges (or half couplings) one of which is fixed at the end of each shaft, the two flanges being bolted together with a ring of bolts to complete the drive
- flannel-mouthed — speaking thickly, as if one's mouth were full of flannel
- flannelled fool — a cricketer
- flapping router — (networking) A router that transmits routing updates alternately advertising a destination network first via one route, then via a different route. Flapping routers are identified on more advanced protocol analysers such as the Network General (TM) Sniffer.
- flatter oneself — to hold the self-satisfying or self-deluding belief (that)
- flavor enhancer — a substance added to food in order to enhance or intensify its flavor: Salt is a common flavor enhancer.
- flavourlessness — Alternative spelling of flavorlessness.
- flavoursomeness — Alt form flavorsomeness.
- flesh and blood — offspring or relatives: one's own flesh and blood.
- flight of ideas — a rapid flow of thought, manifested by accelerated speech with abrupt changes from topic to topic: a symptom of some mental illnesses, especially manic disorder.
- flirtatiousness — The quality of being flirtatious.
- floating charge — an unsecured charge on the assets of an enterprise that allows such assets to be used commercially until the enterprise ceases to operate or the creditor intervenes to demand collateral
- floating screed — Building Trades. screed (def 3).