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20-letter words containing s, f, e, r

  • fore-and-aft topsail — gaff topsail (def 1).
  • fore-topgallant mast — the spar or section of a spar forming the topgallant portion of a foremast on a ship.
  • formative assessment — ongoing assessment of a pupil's educational development within a particular subject area
  • four-colour glossies — 1. Literature created by marketroids that allegedly contains technical specs but which is in fact as superficial as possible without being totally content-free. "Forget the four-colour glossies, give me the tech ref manuals." Often applied as an indication of superficiality even when the material is printed on ordinary paper in black and white. Four-colour-glossy manuals are *never* useful for finding a problem. 2. [rare] Applied by extension to manual pages that don't contain enough information to diagnose why the program doesn't produce the expected or desired output.
  • frame check sequence — (communications)   (FCS) The extra characters added to a frame for error detection and correction(?). FCS is used in X.25, HDLC, Frame Relay, and other data link layer protocols.
  • frederick barbarossa — ("Frederick Barbarossa") 1123?–90, king of Germany 1152–90; king of Italy 1152–90: emperor of the Holy Roman Empire 1152–90.
  • freedom of the press — the right to publish newspapers, magazines, and other printed matter without governmental restriction and subject only to the laws of libel, obscenity, sedition, etc.
  • freight pass-through — a special allowance or discounted price given a bookseller or bookstore by a publishing house for paying the freight charge on a shipment of books ordered: so called because the shipping charge is passed on to the consumer by an increase in the suggested retail price for each book. Abbreviation: FPT.
  • fridtjof nansen land — Franz Josef Land.
  • friend with benefits — (used as a euphemism) a friend with whom one has sex without a romantic relationship or commitment.
  • friends of the earth — an organization of environmentalists and conservationists whose aim is to promote the sustainable use of the earth's resources
  • frosting on the cake — a sweet mixture, cooked or uncooked, for coating or filling cakes, cookies, and the like; icing.
  • fundamental research — research carried out to deepen understanding of the fundamental or basic principles of something
  • get one's finger out — to begin or speed up activity, esp after initial delay or slackness
  • go from bad to worse — worsen
  • gregory of nazianzus — Saint. ?329–89 ad, Cappadocian theologian: bishop of Caesarea (370–79). Feast days: Jan 2, 25, and 30
  • group life insurance — a form of life insurance available to members of a group, typically employees of a company, under a master policy.
  • houses of parliament — In Britain, the Houses of Parliament are the British parliament, which consists of two parts, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The buildings where the British parliament does its work are also called the Houses of Parliament.
  • hydrodesulfurization — desulfurization by catalytic agents of the sulfur-rich hydrocarbons obtained from petroleum or the like during cracking or hydrocracking.
  • ideal of pure reason — God, seen as an idea of pure reason unifying the personal soul with the cosmos.
  • in a state of nature — completely naked
  • in any shape or form — If you say, for example, that you will not accept something in any shape or form, or in any way, shape or form, you are emphasizing that you will not accept it in any circumstances.
  • in the nature of sth — If you say that one thing is in the nature of another, you mean that it is like the other thing.
  • information builders — Distributors of LEVEL5 OBJECT. Telephone +1 800 969 INFO.
  • instruction prefetch — (architecture)   A technique which attempts to minimise the time a processor spends waiting for instructions to be fetched from memory. Instructions following the one currently being executed are loaded into a prefetch queue when the processor's external bus is otherwise idle. If the processor executes a branch instruction or receives an interrupt then the queue must be flushed and reloaded from the new address. Instruction prefetch is often combined with pipelining in an attempt to keep the pipeline busy. By 1995 most processors used prefetching, e.g. Motorola 680x0, Intel 80x86.
  • intestinal fortitude — courage; resoluteness; endurance; guts: to have intestinal fortitude.
  • investment portfolio — the whole range of financial investments held by an individual investor or a financial organization
  • islets of langerhans — biology: pancreatic cells
  • isochronous transfer — isochronous
  • japanese river fever — an infectious disease occurring chiefly in Japan and the East Indies, caused by the organism Rickettsia tsutsugamushi, transmitted by mites through biting.
  • joint life insurance — life insurance covering two or more persons, the benefits of which are paid after the first person dies.
  • joseph of arimathaea — a member of the Sanhedrin who placed the body of Jesus in the tomb. Matt. 27:57–60; Mark 15:43.
  • keep a straight face — look serious, avoid smiling
  • lafayette escadrille — a contingent of American aviators who in 1916 served as volunteers (Escadrille Américaine) in the French air force and in 1918 became the 103rd Pursuit Squadron of the U.S. Army.
  • law of large numbers — the theorem in probability theory that the number of successes increases as the number of experiments increases and approximates the probability times the number of experiments for a large number of experiments.
  • law of superposition — Geology. a basic law of geochronology, stating that in any undisturbed sequence of rocks deposited in layers, the youngest layer is on top and the oldest on bottom, each layer being younger than the one beneath it and older than the one above it.
  • liberty of the press — freedom of the press.
  • life-support machine — A life-support machine is the equipment that is used to keep a person alive when they are very ill and cannot breathe without help.
  • like a house on fire — If two people get on like a house on fire, they quickly become close friends, for example because they have many interests in common.
  • like a ton of bricks — (used esp of the manner of punishing or reprimanding someone) with great force; severely
  • liturgy of the hours — a revision (promulgated in 1970) of the arrangement and texts of the Divine Office
  • lost property office — room for mislaid objects
  • lower yosemite falls — a section of Yosemite Falls in central California, in the Yosemite National Park, that is 98 m (320 ft) high
  • loyal order of moose — See under moose (def 2).
  • make short shrift of — to dispose of quickly and unsympathetically
  • manufacturer's agent — an agent representing one or more manufacturers in selling related but noncompeting goods, usually on a commission basis and in a particular territory.
  • margaret of scotland — Saint. 1045–93, queen consort of Malcolm III of Scotland. Her piety and benefactions to the church led to her canonization (1250). Feast days: June 10, Nov 16
  • marquis de lafayette — 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.
  • mary, queen of scots — family name Stuart. 1542–87, queen of Scotland (1542–67); daughter of James V of Scotland and Mary of Guise. She was married to Francis II of France (1558–60), her cousin Lord Darnley (1565–67), and the Earl of Bothwell (1567–71), who was commonly regarded as Darnley's murderer. She was forced to abdicate in favour of her son (later James VI of Scotland) and fled to England. Imprisoned by Elizabeth I until 1587, she was beheaded for plotting against the English crown
  • master of ceremonies — a person who directs the entertainment at a party, dinner, nightclub, radio or television broadcast, or the like, acting as host and introducing the speakers or performers. Abbreviation: M.C., MC.
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