16-letter words containing t, a, c
- father confessor — confessor (def 2).
- feather merchant — a person who avoids responsibility and effort; loafer.
- feature creature — [Possibly from slang "creature feature" for a horror movie] 1. One who loves to add features to designs or programs, perhaps at the expense of coherence, concision or taste. 2. Alternately, a mythical being that induces otherwise rational programmers to perpetrate such crocks. See also feeping creaturism, creeping featurism.
- federal district — a district in which the national government of a country is located, especially one in Latin America.
- federated church — a church whose membership includes two or more congregations of different denominational affiliation.
- feedback control — (electronics) A control system which monitors its effect on the system it is controlling and modifies its output accordingly. For example, a thermostat has two inputs: the desired temperature and the current temperature (the latter is the feedback). The output of the thermostat changes so as to try to equalise the two inputs. Computer disk drives use feedback control to position the read/write heads accurately on a recording track. Complex systems such as the human body contain many feedback systems that interact with each other; the homeostasis mechanisms that control body temperature and acidity are good examples.
- feel constrained — If you feel constrained to do something, you feel that you must do it, even though you would prefer not to.
- feel-good factor — When journalists refer to the feel-good factor, they mean that people are feeling hopeful and optimistic about the future.
- feeping creature — [feeping creaturism] An unnecessary feature; a bit of chrome that, in the speaker's judgment, is the camel's nose for a whole horde of new features.
- fertility factor — a sex-determining chromosome or gene.
- feulgen reaction — a reaction in which an aldehyde combines with a modified Schiff's reagent to produce a purplish compound: used especially to test for the presence of DNA
- fictionalisation — Alternative spelling of fictionalization.
- fictionalization — to make into fiction; give a somewhat imaginative or fictional version of: to fictionalize a biography.
- filter cigarette — a cigarette with a filter tip
- finance director — financial manager
- finance minister — a member of a government in charge of the financial affairs of a state etc
- financialization — (economics) Conversion of intangible value into financial instruments.
- fingertip search — When the police carry out a fingertip search of a place, they examine it for evidence in a very detailed way.
- fish or cut bait — any of various cold-blooded, aquatic vertebrates, having gills, commonly fins, and typically an elongated body covered with scales.
- flame cultivator — an implement that kills weeds by scorching them with a directed flow of flaming gas.
- flat-bed scanner — a type of optical scanner having a flat, stationary surface on which a page is scanned by a moving head.
- flat-track bully — a sportsperson who dominates inferior opposition, but who cannot beat top-level opponents
- flathead catfish — a yellow and brown catfish, Pylodictus olivaris, common in the central U.S., having a flattened head and a projecting lower jaw.
- flight indicator — artificial horizon (def 3).
- floridean starch — the storage polysaccharide of red algae.
- flotation collar — an inflatable device worn around the neck to keep the wearer afloat when in danger of drowning
- fluorescent lamp — a tubular electric discharge lamp in which light is produced by the fluorescence of phosphors coating the inside of the tube.
- focused strategy — a business strategy in which an organization divests itself of all but its core activities, using the funds raised to enhance the distinctive abilities that give it an advantage over its rivals
- food intolerance — an intolerance of a specific type of food, causing an adverse reaction
- football special — a train service provided specially to transport football supporters to and from a match
- forced vibration — Forced vibration is a type of vibration in which a force is repeatedly applied to a mechanical system.
- 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 contract — a contract to buy or sell an asset at a point in the future at a previously agreed price
- francis townsend — Francis Everett, 1867–1960, U.S. physician and proposer of the Townsend plan.
- frankfurt school — a school of thought, founded at the University of Frankfurt in 1923 by Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and others, derived from Marxist, Freudian, and Hegelian theory
- frederic mistral — Frédéric [frey-dey-reek] /freɪ deɪˈrik/ (Show IPA), 1830–1914, French Provençal poet: Nobel prize 1904.
- free association — the uncensored expression of the ideas, impressions, etc., passing through the mind of the analysand, a technique used to facilitate access to the unconscious.
- friction gearing — wheels or disks transmitting power by means of frictional contact.
- frigate mackerel — a small, blue-green, black-striped fish, Auxis thazard, abundant in tropical seas, having dark, oily flesh that is sometimes used as food.
- front and center — If a topic or question is front and center, a lot of attention is being paid to it or a lot of people are talking about it.
- 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.
- functional shift — a change in the grammatical function of a word, as in the use of the noun input as a verb or the noun fun as an adjective.
- functional water — water containing additives that provide extra nutritional value
- fundamentalistic — Fundamentalist.
- funeral director — a person, usually a licensed embalmer, who supervises or conducts the preparation of the dead for burial and directs or arranges funerals.
- galactic cluster — a comparatively young, irregularly shaped group of stars, often numbering up to several hundred, and held together by mutual gravitation; usually found along the central plane of the Milky Way and other galaxies.
- galactic equator — the great circle on the celestial sphere that is equidistant from the galactic poles, being inclined approximately 62° to the celestial equator and lying about one degree north of the center line of the Milky Way.
- galvanic battery — battery (def 1a).
- gamma correction — (hardware) Adjustments applied during the display of a digital representation of colour on a screen in order to compensate for the fact that the Cathode Ray Tubes used in computer monitors (and televisions) produce a light intensity which is not proportional to the input voltage. The light intensity is actually proportional to the input voltage raised to the inverse power of some constant, called gamma. Its value varies from one display to another, but is usually around 2.5. Because it is more intuitive for the colour components (red, green and blue) to be varied linearly in the computer, the actual voltages sent to the monitor by the display hardware must be adjusted in order to make the colour component intensity on the screen proportional to the value stored in the computer's display memory. This process is most easily achieved by a dedicated module in the display hardware which simply scales the outputs of the display memory before sending them to the digital-to-analogue converters. More expensive graphics cards and workstations (particularly those used for CAD applications) will have a gamma correction facility. In combination with the "white-point" gamma correction is used to achieve precise colour matching.
- garment district — an area in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City, including portions of Seventh Avenue and Broadway between 34th and 40th Streets and the streets intersecting them, that contains many factories, showrooms, etc., related to the design, manufacture, and wholesale distribution of clothing.