18-letter words containing o, f, s, a
- children of israel — the Jews; Hebrews
- christian reformed — of or relating to a Protestant denomination (Christian Reformed Church) organized in the U.S. in 1857 by groups that had seceded from the Dutch Reformed Church.
- church of scotland — the established church in Scotland, Calvinist in doctrine and Presbyterian in constitution
- classified section — the part of a publication that contains classified advertising
- coffee-table music — unadventurous music
- combustion furnace — a furnace used in the laboratory to carry out elemental analysis of organic compounds
- compassion fatigue — the inability to react sympathetically to a crisis, disaster, etc, because of overexposure to previous crises, disasters, etc
- congress of vienna — the European conference held at Vienna from 1814–15 to settle the territorial problems left by the Napoleonic Wars
- considered harmful — (programming, humour) A type of phrase based on the title of Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous note in the March 1968 Communications of the ACM, "Goto Statement Considered Harmful", which fired the first salvo in the structured programming wars. Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently harmful that it will (by policy) no longer print articles taking so assertive a position against a coding practice. In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and parodies bore titles of the form "X considered Y". The structured-programming wars eventually blew over with the realisation that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has remained as a persistent minor in-joke.
- cooking facilities — equipment necessary for cooking
- court of st. james — the British royal court
- creme de framboise — a liqueur flavored with raspberries.
- cultural diffusion — act of diffusing; state of being diffused.
- curvature of space — (in relativity) a property of space near massive bodies in which their gravitational field causes light to travel along curved paths.
- dangerous offender — an offender who is deemed by a court of law to be likely to engage in further violent conduct, and who thus becomes eligible for an indefinite prison sentence
- data flow analysis — (programming) A process to discover the dependencies between different data items manipulated by a program. The order of execution in a data driven language is determined solely by the data dependencies. For example, given the equations 1. X = A + B 2. B = 2 + 2 3. A = 3 + 4 a data-flow analysis would find that 2 and 3 must be evaluated before 1. Since there are no data dependencies between 2 and 3, they may be evaluated in any order, including in parallel. This technique is implemented in hardware in some pipelined processors with multiple functional units. It allows instructions to be executed as soon as their inputs are available, independent of the original program order.
- defense calculator — IBM 701
- diaminofluorescein — (organic compound) A fluorescein into which two amino groups have been substituted.
- disidentifications — Plural form of disidentification.
- division of labour — a system of organizing the manufacture of an article in a series of separate specialized operations, each of which is carried out by a different worker or group of workers
- due process of law — the administration of justice in accordance with established rules and principles
- dwarf storage unit — (humour) (DSU) An IBM term for a cupboard.
- dysfunctionalities — Plural form of dysfunctionality.
- economies of scale — Economies of scale are the financial advantages that a company gains when it produces large quantities of products.
- eleanor of castile — 1246–90, Spanish wife of Edward I of England. Eleanor Crosses were erected at each place at which her body rested between Nottingham, where she died, and London, where she is buried
- excess profits tax — a tax on profits exceeding a certain amount
- fall on one's feet — a plural of foot.
- fall-back position — an alternative plan
- fallot's tetralogy — a congenital heart disease in which there are four defects: pulmonary stenosis, enlarged right ventricle, a ventricular septal defect, and an aorta whose origin lies over the septal defect. In babies suffering this disease the defects can be corrected by surgery
- false imprisonment — the unlawful restraint of a person from exercising the right to freedom of movement.
- far eastern region — former name of Khabarovsk.
- 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.
- fast-food industry — the industry surrounding fast-food restaurants
- feast of orthodoxy — a solemn festival held on the first Sunday of Lent (Orthodoxy Sunday) commemorating the restoration of the use of icons in the church (a.d. 842) and the triumph over all heresies.
- feather one's nest — one of the horny structures forming the principal covering of birds, consisting typically of a hard, tubular portion attached to the body and tapering into a thinner, stemlike portion bearing a series of slender, barbed processes that interlock to form a flat structure on each side.
- 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).
- fibonacci sequence — (mathematics) The infinite sequence of numbers beginning 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ... in which each term is the sum of the two terms preceding it. The ratio of successive Fibonacci terms tends to the golden ratio, namely (1 + sqrt 5)/2.
- fibrocartilaginous — a type of cartilage having a large number of fibers.
- 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.
- 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.
- fischer von erlach — Johann Bernhard [yaw-hahn bern-hahrt] /ˈyɔ hɑn ˈbɛrn hɑrt/ (Show IPA), 1656–1723, Austrian architect.
- fish and chip shop — In Britain, a fish and chip shop is a shop which sells hot food such as fish and chips, fried chicken, sausages, and meat pies. The food is cooked in the shop and people take it away to eat at home or in the street.
- fissure of rolando — central sulcus.
- fixed-focus camera — a camera with an unadjustable focal length and with a relatively large depth of field.
- fixed-radio access — Wireless Local Loop