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17-letter words containing s, r, f, l

  • falkland islander — a person from the Falkland Islands
  • fall on deaf ears — the organ of hearing and equilibrium in vertebrates, in humans consisting of an external ear that gathers sound vibrations, a middle ear in which the vibrations resonate against the tympanic membrane, and a fluid-filled internal ear that maintains balance and that conducts the tympanic vibrations to the auditory nerve, which transmits them as impulses to the brain.
  • fall over oneself — to do everything within one's power
  • false bread-fruit — ceriman.
  • farmers' alliance — an informal name for various regional political organizations that farmers established in the 1880s and that led to the formation of the Peoples' party in 1891–92.
  • fiddleback spider — brown recluse spider.
  • field penny-cress — the common penny-cress, Thlaspi arvense.
  • field sales force — a team of people selling a product or service in the field as opposed to over the telephone, etc
  • financial adviser — A financial adviser is someone whose job it is to advise people about financial products and services.
  • financial futures — futures in a stock-exchange index, currency exchange rate, or interest rate enabling banks, building societies, brokers, and speculators to hedge their involvement in these markets
  • first call on sth — If you have first call on something, you will be asked before anyone else whether you want to buy or use it.
  • first normal form — database normalisation
  • first-aid classes — classes which teach people how to give immediate medical help in an emergency
  • first-loss policy — an insurance policy for goods in which a total loss is extremely unlikely and the insurer agrees to provide cover for a sum less than the total value of the property
  • first-order logic — (language, logic)   The language describing the truth of mathematical formulas. Formulas describe properties of terms and have a truth value. The following are atomic formulas: True False p(t1,..tn) where t1,..,tn are terms and p is a predicate. If F1, F2 and F3 are formulas and v is a variable then the following are compound formulas: The "order" of a logic specifies what entities "For all" and "Exists" may quantify over. First-order logic can only quantify over sets of atomic propositions. (E.g. For all p . p => p). Second-order logic can quantify over functions on propositions, and higher-order logic can quantify over any type of entity. The sets over which quantifiers operate are usually implicit but can be deduced from well-formedness constraints. In first-order logic quantifiers always range over ALL the elements of the domain of discourse. By contrast, second-order logic allows one to quantify over subsets.
  • flash photography — photography using a momentary flash of artificial light as a source of illumination.
  • flea in one's ear — a sharp rebuke
  • flexible response — a military strategy that enables the response to an attack to be adapted to the nature and strength of the attack
  • flickertail state — North Dakota (used as a nickname).
  • flight instrument — any instrument used to indicate the altitude, attitude, airspeed, drift, or direction of an aircraft.
  • flog a dead horse — a large, solid-hoofed, herbivorous quadruped, Equus caballus, domesticated since prehistoric times, bred in a number of varieties, and used for carrying or pulling loads, for riding, and for racing.
  • floppy disk drive — disk drive
  • florentine stitch — a straight stitch worked in a high and low relief pattern to form a variety of zigzag or oblique designs.
  • flowers of sulfur — sublimed sulfur in the form of a fine yellow powder, used in medicine chiefly to kill parasites and fungi and to treat certain skin diseases.
  • fluorescent light — a fluorescent lamp in domestic or commercial use; a fluorescent strip
  • fluorescent strip — a fluorescent light in the form of a long strip
  • fluvioterrestrial — (of animals) able to live in rivers and on land
  • footmen's gallery — the rearmost section of seats in the balcony of an English theater, especially in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
  • fore-and-aft sail — any of various sails, as jib-headed sails, gaff sails, lugsails, lateen sails, spritsails, staysails, and jibs, that do not set on yards and whose normal position, when not trimmed, is in a fore-and-aft direction amidships.
  • foreign relations — (used with a singular verb) the field of foreign affairs: an expert in foreign relations.
  • four-letter words — any of a number of short words, usually of four letters, considered offensive or vulgar because of their reference to excrement or sex.
  • four-star general — high-ranking military officer
  • four-stroke cycle — A four-stroke cycle is the cycle of engine operation which requires four strokes of the piston: for induction, compression, ignition, and exhaust.
  • fourfold purchase — a tackle that is composed of a rope passed through two fourfold blocks in such a way as to provide mechanical power in the ratio of 1 to 5 or 1 to 4, depending on whether hauling is done on the running or the standing block and without considering friction. Compare tackle (def 2).
  • fractal dimension — (mathematics)   A common type of fractal dimension is the Hausdorff-Besicovich Dimension, but there are several different ways of computing fractal dimension. Fractal dimension can be calculated by taking the limit of the quotient of the log change in object size and the log change in measurement scale, as the measurement scale approaches zero. The differences come in what is exactly meant by "object size" and what is meant by "measurement scale" and how to get an average number out of many different parts of a geometrical object. Fractal dimensions quantify the static *geometry* of an object. For example, consider a straight line. Now blow up the line by a factor of two. The line is now twice as long as before. Log 2 / Log 2 = 1, corresponding to dimension 1. Consider a square. Now blow up the square by a factor of two. The square is now 4 times as large as before (i.e. 4 original squares can be placed on the original square). Log 4 / log 2 = 2, corresponding to dimension 2 for the square. Consider a snowflake curve formed by repeatedly replacing ___ with _/\_, where each of the 4 new lines is 1/3 the length of the old line. Blowing up the snowflake curve by a factor of 3 results in a snowflake curve 4 times as large (one of the old snowflake curves can be placed on each of the 4 segments _/\_). Log 4 / log 3 = 1.261... Since the dimension 1.261 is larger than the dimension 1 of the lines making up the curve, the snowflake curve is a fractal. [sci.fractals FAQ].
  • fraternal society — a club or other association, usually of men, having a limited membership and devoted to professional, religious, charitable, or social activities.
  • french somaliland — a former name of Djibouti (def 1).
  • frostbite sailing — the sport of sailing in temperate latitudes during the winter despite cold weather.
  • functional isomer — any of several structural isomers that have the same molecular formula but with the atoms connected in different ways and therefore falling into different functional groups.
  • furbish lousewort — any plant belonging to the genus Pedicularis, of the figwort family, as the wood betony, formerly supposed to cause lice in sheep feeding on it: one species, P. furbishiae (Furbish lousewort) of parts of Maine and New Brunswick, Canada, having finely toothed leaves and a cluster of yellow flowers, is endangered and was thought to be extinct until specimens were discovered in 1946 and again in 1976.
  • gamblers' fallacy — the fallacy that in a series of chance events the probability of one event occurring increases with the number of times another event has occurred in succession
  • gi bill of rights — any of various Congressional bills enacted to provide funds for college educations, home-buying loans, and other benefits for armed-services veterans.
  • glory-of-the-snow — any of several plants belonging to the genus Chionodoxa, of the lily family, native to the Old World, having showy, blue, white, or pink flowers that bloom early in the spring.
  • great vowel shift — a series of changes in the quality of the long vowels between Middle and Modern English as a result of which all were raised, while the high vowels (ē) and (o̅o̅), already at the upper limit, underwent breaking to become the diphthongs (ī) and (ou).
  • gulf war syndrome — a group of symptoms occurring in some Gulf War veterans, most commonly including headache and memory loss, muscle pain, skin disorders, fatigue, sleep disturbances, and gastrointestinal and respiratory ailments, possibly caused by exposure to chemical weapons, vaccines, infectious diseases, or other factors.
  • half-round chisel — a cold chisel with a semicircular cutting edge used for making narrow channels
  • hall of residence — Halls of residence are buildings with rooms or flats, usually built by universities or colleges, in which students live during the term.
  • have feelings for — to be emotionally or sexually attracted to
  • homo floresiensis — a possible species of very small, primitive human: its fossils were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003.
  • immunofluorescent — Of, pertaining to, or using immunofluorescence.
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