16-letter words containing p, i, f
- firework display — a public event at which fireworks are set alight
- first four ships — the earliest settlers' ships to arrive in the Canterbury Province
- fissure eruption — the emergence of lava from a fissure in the ground rather than from a volcanic cone or vent
- fixed-price menu — In a restaurant, the cost of a meal on a fixed-price menu stays the same and does not vary.
- flash in the pan — a brief, sudden burst of bright light: a flash of lightning.
- flash photolysis — the study of photochemical reaction mechanisms in gases by analyzing spectroscopically the reaction products in a gas mixture irradiated with a powerful light flash.
- flying phalanger — any of various small phalangers of Australia and New Guinea, having a parachutelike fold of skin on each side of the body to give gliding assistance in leaping.
- follicular phase — a stage of the menstrual cycle, from onset of menstruation to ovulation.
- football special — a train service provided specially to transport football supporters to and from a match
- footsteps editor — the technician who adds sound effects, such as doors closing, rain falling, etc, during the postproduction sound-dubbing process
- formation packer — A formation packer is a substance that is used as a seal between the casing and the borehole so that part of the hole can be tested.
- forward planning — business: making future provisions
- francis joseph i — 1830–1916, emperor of Austria 1848–1916; king of Hungary 1867–1916.
- francis of paula — Saint, 1416–1507, Italian monk: founder of the order of Minims.
- free enterpriser — a person who practices or advocates free enterprise.
- free perspective — exaggeration of perspectival devices to increase the illusion of depth, used especially in stage-set painting and construction.
- french polynesia — a French overseas territory in the S Pacific, including the Society Islands, Marquesas Islands, and other scattered island groups. 1544 sq. mi. (4000 sq. km). Capital: Papeete.
- fringed polygala — a North American milkwort, Polygala paucifolia, having flowers with purplish-pink, winglike petals and a fringed tube.
- front projection — a display system that projects an enlarged television picture on the front surface of a reflective screen.
- frontier dispute — a conflict concerning a frontier between countries and which usually involves those countries
- fuel consumption — use of a material to generate power
- functional group — a group of atoms responsible for the characteristic behavior of the class of compounds in which the group occurs, as the hydroxyl group in alcohols.
- furniture polish — product: shines wood
- gender-profiling — the use of personal characteristics or behavior patterns to make generalizations about a person, as in gender profiling.
- go-faster stripe — a decorative line, intended to be suggestive of high speed, on the bodywork of a car
- grapefruit juice — nectar of the grapefruit
- gravity platform — (in the oil industry) a drilling platform that rests directly on the sea bed and is kept in position by its own weight; it is usually made of reinforced concrete
- grim file reaper — (storage, operating system) (GFR) An ITS and LISP Machine utility to remove files according to some program-automated or semi-automatic manual procedure, especially one designed to reclaim mass storage space or reduce name-space clutter (the original GFR actually moved files to tape). See also prowler, reaper. Compare GC, which discards only provably worthless stuff.
- group identifier — (operating system) (gid) A unique number, between 0 an 32767, identifying a set of users under Unix. Gids are found in the /etc/passwd and /etc/group databases (or their NIS equivalents) and one is also associated with each file, indicating the group to which its group permissions apply.
- half life period — Physics. the time required for one half the atoms of a given amount of a radioactive substance to disintegrate.
- haptic interface — (interface, hardware) A touch interface to a computer that provides feedback, such as a data glove.
- head post office — the main post office in a town
- high-pass filter — a filter that allows high-frequency electromagnetic signals to pass while rejecting or attenuating others below a specific value.
- high-performance — A high-performance car or other product goes very fast or does a lot.
- hopfield network — (artificial intelligence) (Or "Hopfield model") A kind of neural network investigated by John Hopfield in the early 1980s. The Hopfield network has no special input or output neurons (see McCulloch-Pitts), but all are both input and output, and all are connected to all others in both directions (with equal weights in the two directions). Input is applied simultaneously to all neurons which then output to each other and the process continues until a stable state is reached, which represents the network output.
- house of worship — house of God.
- hyper-conformity — action in accord with prevailing social standards, attitudes, practices, etc.
- hyperflexibility — capable of being bent, usually without breaking; easily bent: a flexible ruler.
- imperfect flower — a unisexual flower with only stamens or only pistils
- imperfect fungus — a fungus for which only the asexual reproductive stage is known, as any fungus of the Fungi imperfecti.
- imperfect market — a market where buyers or sellers can influence the market, and there is a lack of product information
- imperfectability — The quality of not being perfectable; of being forever imperfect.
- imperfectibility — The state or quality of being imperfectible.
- imperfectiveness — (grammar) The state or quality of being imperfective.
- infinite product — a sequence of numbers in which an infinite number of terms are multiplied together.
- inflationary gap — the excess of total spending in an economy over the value, at current prices, of the output it can produce
- information pack — a set of leaflets giving information about something
- isle of portland — a rugged limestone peninsula in SW England, in Dorset, connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus and by Chesil Bank: the lighthouse of Portland Bill lies at the S tip; famous for the quarrying of Portland stone, a fine building material. Pop (town): 12 000 (latest est)
- isoplastic graft — syngraft.
- law of parsimony — a principle according to which an explanation of a thing or event is made with the fewest possible assumptions.