21-letter words containing r, e, f, u
- frequent wash shampoo — a shampoo whose mildness allows it to be used frequently
- friuli-venezia giulia — a region in NE Italy: formerly part of Venezia Giulia, most of which was ceded to Yugoslavia (now Croatia and Slovenia) in 1947. 2947 sq. mi. (7630 sq. km).
- full faith and credit — the obligation under Article IV of the U.S. Constitution for each state to recognize the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state.
- functional illiterate — a person with some basic education who still falls short of a minimum standard of literacy or whose reading and writing skills are inadequate to everyday needs.
- functional imperative — a requirement for the survival of any social system, as communication, control of conflict, or socialization.
- fundamental frequency — the lowest frequency at which a medium will freely oscillate.
- ground-effect machine — ACV (def 2).
- hay-pauncefote treaty — an agreement (1901) between the U.S. and Great Britain giving the U.S. the sole right to build a canal across Central America connecting the Atlantic and Pacific.
- high court of justice — an English court formed in 1873 from several superior courts and consisting of a court of original jurisdiction (High Court of Justice) and an appellate court (Court of Appeal)
- higher-order function — (HOF) A function that can take one or more functions as argument and/or return a function as its value. E.g. map in (map f l) which returns the list of results of applying function f to each of the elements of list l. See also curried function.
- house of prostitution — a brothel.
- illinois bundleflower — a warm-season perennial, Desmanthus illinoensis, having small brown legumes and fernlike leaves, native to North American prairies, glades, and pastures.
- in (or out of) order — in (or not in) proper sequence or position
- in (or out of) phase — in (or not in) a state of exactly parallel movements, oscillations, etc.; in (or not in) synchronization
- in (or out of) place — in (or out of) the customary, proper, or assigned place
- in a state of undress — If someone is in a state of undress, they do not have all their clothes on.
- in the course of time — eventually
- infectious ectromelia — ectromelia (def 2).
- inflationary universe — a version of the big bang theory in which the universe underwent very rapid growth during the first fraction of a second before it settled down to its current rate of expansion.
- insurance certificate — a certificate that shows that a person or organization has insurance
- interest-rate futures — financial futures based on projected movements of interest rates
- joseph bonaparte gulf — an inlet of the Timor Sea in N Australia. Width: 360 km (225 miles)
- lafayette, marquis de — Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier [ma-ree zhaw-zef pawl eev rawk zheel-ber dy maw-tyey] /maˈri ʒɔˈzɛf pɔl iv rɔk ʒilˈbɛr dü mɔˈtyeɪ/ (Show IPA), Marquis de. Also, La Fayette. 1757–1834, French soldier, statesman, and liberal leader, who served in the American Revolutionary Army as aide-de-camp to General Washington, and took a leading part in the French revolutions of 1789 and 1830.
- lafcadio's adventures — French Les Caves du Vatican. a novel (1914) by André Gide.
- league of arab states — Arab League.
- learning difficulties — difficulty experienced in reaching the average standard of people of the same age group as regards intellectual and cognitive skills and performance
- like a blue-arsed fly — in a state of frenzied activity
- liquefied natural gas — a mixture of various gases, esp methane, liquefied under pressure for transportation and used as an engine fuel
- lost in the underflow — (jargon) Too small to be worth considering; more specifically, small beyond the limits of accuracy or measurement. This is a reference to "floating point underflow". The Hacker's Jargon File claimed that it is also a pun on "undertow" (a kind of fast, cold current that sometimes runs just offshore and can be dangerous to swimmers). "Well, sure, photon pressure from the stadium lights alters the path of a thrown baseball, but that effect gets lost in the underflow". Compare epsilon, epsilon squared; see also overflow bit.
- lotus-of-the-true-law — a Mahayana sutra, forming with its references to Amida and the Bodhisattvas the basis for the doctrine that there is something of Buddha in everyone, so that salvation is universally available: a central text of Mahayana Buddhism.
- lull before the storm — If you describe a situation as the lull before the storm, you mean that although it is calm now, there is going to be trouble in the future.
- made of sterner stuff — If you say that someone is made of sterner stuff, you mean that they have a strong personality and are capable of overcoming difficulties and problems.
- make up for lost time — compensate for past inaction
- make yourself at home — settle in
- manufacturing process — chain of production
- mother-of-pearl cloud — nacreous cloud.
- no smoke without fire — the evidence strongly suggests something has indeed happened
- north pacific current — a warm current flowing eastward across the Pacific Ocean.
- of your own free will — out of choice
- part of the furniture — If you describe someone or something as part of the furniture, you are suggesting that they have been somewhere such as their place of work for such a long time that it is hard to imagine that place without them.
- pathfinder prospectus — a prospectus regarding the flotation of a new company that contains only sufficient details to test the market reaction
- peroxydisulfuric acid — persulfuric acid (def 2).
- place of articulation — the location at which two speech organs approach or come together in producing a speech sound, as in the contact of the tongue and the teeth to form a dental sound. Also called point of articulation. Compare articulator (def 2).
- portuguese man-of-war — any of several large, oceanic hydrozoans of the genus Physalia, having a large, bladderlike structure with a saillike crest by which they are buoyed up and from which dangle tentacles with stinging cells.
- preacquisition profit — the retained profit of a company earned before a takeover and therefore not eligible for distribution as a dividend to the shareholders of the acquiring company
- pull oneself together — to draw or haul toward oneself or itself, in a particular direction, or into a particular position: to pull a sled up a hill.
- purple-fringed orchid — either of two orchids, Habenaria fimbriata or H. psycodes, of eastern North America, having a cluster of fragrant purple flowers with a fringed lip.
- purple-fringed orchis — either of two North American orchids (Habenaria psycodes and H. fimbriata) with purple-fringed flowers
- radius of convergence — a positive number so related to a given power series that the power series converges for every number whose absolute value is less than this particular number.
- return from interrupt — (programming) (RTI) An instruction mnemonic on many computers including the 6502 and 6800. The variant "RETI" is found among former Zilog Z80 hackers (almost nobody programs these things in assembly code anymore). The Intel 80x86 equivalent is "IRET".