13-letter words containing o, f, a
- floristically — In a floristic manner.
- flow cleavage — cleavage resulting from the parallel alignment of the mineral constituents of a rock when in a plastic condition.
- flower garden — plot for flowers
- flowering ash — a variety of ash tree that produces conspicuous flowers
- fluctuational — Of, pertaining to, or resulting from fluctuation(s).
- fluophosphate — fluorophosphate.
- fluoroacetate — a toxic chemical compound, C2H2FNaO2, occurring naturally in certain plants, and commonly used as rat poison
- fluorocarbons — Plural form of fluorocarbon.
- fluorographic — of or pertaining to fluorography
- fluoroplastic — any of the plastics, as Teflon, in which hydrogen atoms of the hydrocarbon chains are replaced by fluorine atoms.
- flutterboards — Plural form of flutterboard.
- flying boxcar — a large airplane designed to carry cargo.
- flying dragon — any of several arboreal lizards of the genus Draco, having an extensible membrane between the limbs along each side by means of which it makes long, gliding leaps.
- focal seizure — an epileptic manifestation arising from a localized anomaly in the brain, as a small tumor or scar, and usually involving a single motor or sensory mechanism but occasionally spreading to other areas and causing convulsions and loss of consciousness.
- folding chair — a chair that can be collapsed flat for easy storage or transport.
- foliage plant — any plant grown chiefly for its attractive leaves.
- fonctionnaire — a civil servant
- fondant icing — icing made from fondant
- fontainebleau — a town in N France, SE of Paris: famous palace, long a favorite residence of French kings; extensive forest.
- food additive — additive (def 4).
- fool's errand — a completely absurd, pointless, or useless errand.
- foolhardiness — recklessly or thoughtlessly bold; foolishly rash or venturesome.
- foolheartedly — Foolishly. In a foolhardy manner. Without thinking about the consequences.
- fooling about — the act of speaking or acting in a playful, teasing, or jesting manner
- foot-dragging — reluctance or failure to proceed or act promptly.
- football game — soccer match
- for a kickoff — the beginning of something
- for chrissake — for Christ's sake
- for dear life — the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.
- for sb's part — When you are describing people's thoughts or actions, you can say for her part or for my part, for example, to introduce what a particular person thinks or does.
- for sb's sake — When you do something for someone's sake, you do it in order to help them or make them happy.
- for values of — (jargon) A common rhetorical maneuver at MIT is to use any of the canonical random numbers as placeholders for variables. "The max function takes 42 arguments, for arbitrary values of 42". "There are 69 ways to leave your lover, for 69 = 50". This is especially likely when the speaker has uttered a random number and realises that it was not recognised as such, but even "non-random" numbers are occasionally used in this fashion. A related joke is that pi equals 3 - for small values of pi and large values of 3. This usage probably derives from the programming language MAD (Michigan Algorithm Decoder), an ALGOL-like language that was the most common choice among mainstream (non-hacker) users at MIT in the mid-1960s. It had a control structure FOR VALUES OF X = 3, 7, 99 DO ... that would repeat the indicated instructions for each value in the list (unlike the usual FOR that generates an arithmetic sequence of values). MAD is long extinct, but similar for-constructs still flourish (e.g. in Unix's shell languages).
- for-instances — an instance or example: Give me a for-instance of what you mean.
- foramen ovale — the small, oval opening in the wall that separates the atria of the heart in a normal fetus: it allows blood to bypass the nonfunctioning fetal lungs until the time of birth when it gradually closes up
- foraminiferal — Of, pertaining to, or resembling the foraminifers; foraminiferous.
- foraminiferan — any chiefly marine protozoan of the sarcodinian order Foraminifera, typically having a linear, spiral, or concentric shell perforated by small holes or pores through which pseudopodia extend.
- force a smile — to make oneself smile
- force majeure — an unexpected and disruptive event that may operate to excuse a party from a contract.
- forced labour — labour done because of force; compulsory labour
- forearm smash — a blow like a punch delivered with the forearm in certain types of wrestling
- foreign agent — a spy for a foreign country
- foreordaining — Present participle of foreordain.
- foreshadowing — to show or indicate beforehand; prefigure: Political upheavals foreshadowed war.
- forest ranger — any of the officers employed by the government to supervise the care and preservation of forests, especially public forests.
- forgotten man — a person no longer in the mind of the general public.
- formal review — (project) A technical review conducted with the customer including the types of reviews called for in DOD-STD-2167A (Preliminary Design Review, Critical Design Review, etc.)
- formal system — an uninterpreted symbolic system whose syntax is precisely defined, and on which a relation of deducibility is defined in purely syntactic terms; a logistic system
- formal theory — an uninterpreted symbolic system whose syntax is precisely defined, and on which a relation of deducibility is defined in purely syntactic terms; a logistic system
- formalisation — Alternative spelling of formalization.
- formalization — to make formal, especially for the sake of official or authorized acceptance: to formalize an understanding by drawing up a legal contract.