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19-letter words containing t, i, f, o

  • ferrite core memory — (storage)   (Or "core") An early form of non-volatile storage built (by hand) from tiny rings of magnetisable material threaded onto very fine wire to form large (e.g. 13"x13" or more) rectangluar arrays. Each core stored one bit of data. These were sandwiched between printed circuit boards(?). Sets of wires ran horizontally and vertically and where a vertical and horizontal wire crossed, a core had both wires threaded through it. A single core could be selected and magnetised by passing sufficient current through its horizontal and vertical wires. A core would retain its magnetisation until it was re-magnetised. The two possible polarities of magnetisation were used to represent the binary values zero and one. A third "sense" wire, passed through the core and, if the magnetisation of the core was changed, a small pulse would be induced in the sense wire which could be detected and used to deduce the core's original state. Some core memory was immersed in a bath of heated oil to improve its performance. Core memory was rendered obsolete by semiconductor memory. For example, the 1970s-era NCR 499 had two boards, each with 16 kilobytes of core memory.
  • fight to the finish — A fight to the finish is one in which one of the people or groups fighting is killed or completely defeated.
  • fighter-interceptor — a fighter plane used for the defense of a region against air attack, especially by attacking bombers.
  • finger on the pulse — If you have your finger on the pulse of something, you know all the latest opinions or developments concerning it.
  • first international — a socialistic organization (1864–76) formed to unite and promote the interests of workers throughout the world. Compare international (def 6).
  • first law of motion — any of three laws of classical mechanics, either the law that a body remains at rest or in motion with a constant velocity unless an external force acts on the body (first law of motion) the law that the sum of the forces acting on a body is equal to the product of the mass of the body and the acceleration produced by the forces, with motion in the direction of the resultant of the forces (second law of motion) or the law that for every force acting on a body, the body exerts a force having equal magnitude and the opposite direction along the same line of action as the original force (third law of motion or law of action and reaction)
  • first person plural — a grammatical category of pronouns and verbs used by the speaker to refer to or talk about himself together with others
  • first world problem — a fairly minor problem, frustrating situation, or complaint associated with a relatively high standard of living, as opposed to the more serious problems associated with poverty: I’m bored with all my electronic gadgets—such a first world problem!
  • first-in, first-out — an inventory plan that assumes that items purchased first will be sold first and that by valuing inventory items at the price of the most recent purchases, inventory values will be comparable to any rise in prices. Abbreviation: FIFO . Compare last-in, first-out.
  • first-past-the-post — A first-past-the-post system for choosing members of parliament or other representatives is one in which the candidate who gets most votes wins.
  • first-sale doctrine — a legal principle allowing the purchaser of a lawfully made copy of a copyright-protected work to sell or give away that copy without permission but not to reproduce it.
  • fixed cost contract — a contract in which the costs do not vary
  • fixed-rate mortgage — a home mortgage for which equal monthly payments of interest and principal are paid over the life of the loan, usually for a term of 30 years.
  • fixed-term contract — a contract for a particular and fixed period
  • flat-joint pointing — pointing having flush joints of common mortar.
  • floating foundation — a foundation used in yielding soil, having for its footing a raft tending to displace a weight greater than that of the building.
  • floating restaurant — a boat or ship that has been converted for use as a restaurant
  • floating-point unit — (hardware)   (FPU) A floating-point accelerator, usually in a single integrated circuit, possible on the same IC as the central processing unit.
  • florida velvet bean — a tropical vine, Mucuna deeringiana, of the legume family, having showy, purple flowers in drooping clusters and black, hairy pods: grown as an ornamental.
  • fluoride toothpaste — toothpaste containing a small amount of fluoride as protection against tooth decay
  • fly in the ointment — Also called true fly. any of numerous two-winged insects of the order Diptera, especially of the family Muscidae, as the common housefly.
  • follow-up interview — a second interview following an initial interview
  • for all it is worth — If someone does something for all it is worth, they do it as much as possible and for as long as they can get benefit from it.
  • for all sb is worth — If you do something for all you are worth, you do it with a lot of energy and enthusiasm.
  • for crying out loud — exasperation
  • for the life of one — the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.
  • for what it's worth — good or important enough to justify (what is specified): advice worth taking; a place worth visiting.
  • forensic accountant — an accountant who specializes in applying accountancy skills to the purposes of the law
  • forensic psychiatry — the use of psychiatric knowledge and techniques in questions of law, as in determining legal insanity.
  • fortification agate — an agate, used as a gem, having polygonal banding such that it suggests the plan of a bastion.
  • forward integration — the acquisition of all or part of a distribution chain by a firm that sells the goods distributed, so that the firm becomes or become closer to the direct seller of the goods
  • foundation subjects — the subjects studied as part of the National Curriculum, including the compulsory core subjects
  • fractal compression — (algorithm)   A technique for encoding images using fractals.
  • fractional currency — coins or paper money of a smaller denomination than the basic monetary unit.
  • frameshift mutation — a mutation caused by frameshift.
  • freedom of the city — nominal citizenship in a city, conferred as an honor upon important visitors.
  • freezing injunction — an order enabling the court to freeze the assets of a defendant, esp to prevent him or her taking them abroad
  • french north africa — the former French possessions of Algeria, French Morocco, and Tunisia
  • friend of the court — amicus curiae.
  • from pillar to post — an upright shaft or structure, of stone, brick, or other material, relatively slender in proportion to its height, and of any shape in section, used as a building support, or standing alone, as for a monument: Gothic pillars; a pillar to commemorate Columbus.
  • from rags to riches — a worthless piece of cloth, especially one that is torn or worn.
  • front-end financing — money or costs required or incurred in advance of a project in order to get it under way
  • front-fastening bra — a bra which is fastened together at the front of the body
  • frontier technology — innovative or new technology
  • functional analysis — the branch of mathematics that deals with the theory of vector spaces and linear functionals.
  • functional calculus — the branch of symbolic logic that includes the sentential calculus and that deals with sentential functions and quantifiers and with logical relations between sentences containing quantifiers.
  • functional currency — Functional currency is the main currency used by a business.
  • functional database — (database, language)   A database which uses a functional language as its query language. Databases would seem to be an inappropriate application for functional languages since, a purely functional language would have to return a new copy of the entire database every time (part of) it was updated. To be practically scalable, the update mechanism must clearly be destructive rather than functional; however it is quite feasible for the query language to be purely functional so long as the database is considered as an argument. One approach to the update problem would use a monad to encapsulate database access and ensure it was single threaded. Alternative approaches have been suggested by Trinder, who suggests non-destructive updating with shared data structures, and Sutton who uses a variant of a Phil Wadler's linear type system. There are two main classes of functional database languages. The first is based upon Backus' FP language, of which FQL is probably the best known example. Adaplan is a more recent language which falls into this category. More recently, people have been working on languages which are syntactically very similar to modern functional programming languages, but which also provide all of the features of a database language, e.g. bulk data structures which can be incrementally updated, type systems which can be incrementally updated, and all data persisting in a database. Examples are PFL [Poulovassilis&Small, VLDB-91], and Machiavelli [Ohori et al, ACM SIGMOD Conference, 1998].
  • functional language — (language)   A language that supports and encourages functional programming.
  • functional medicine — individualized medical care that recognizes the interactions between genetic and environmental factors and between the body's interconnected systems.
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