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18-letter words containing t, i, n, o

  • feldenkrais method — a system of gentle movements that promote flexibility, coordination, and self-awareness
  • fettuccine alfredo — fettuccine in cream sauce with grated Parmesan cheese.
  • fibrocartilaginous — a type of cartilage having a large number of fibers.
  • field of quotients — a field whose elements are pairs of elements of a given commutative integral domain such that the second element of each pair is not zero. The field of rational numbers is the field of quotients of the integral domain of integers.
  • fifth monarchy men — (during the Commonwealth in the 17th century) a militant sect of Puritans who identified the fifth monarchy with the millennial reign of Christ and who believed they should help to inaugurate that reign by force.
  • file control block — (operating system)   (FCB) An MS-DOS data structure that stores information about an open file. The number of FCBs is configured in CONFIG.SYS with a command FCBS=x,y where x (between 1 and 255 inclusive, default 4) specifies the number of file control blocks to allocate and therefore the number of files that MS-DOS can have open at one time. y (not needed from DOS 5.0 onward) specifies the number of files to be closed automatically if all x are in use.
  • filename extension — (filename extension)   The portion of a filename, following the final point, which indicates the kind of data stored in the file - the file type. Many operating systems use filename extensions, e.g. Unix, VMS, MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows. They are usually from one to three letters (some sad old OSes support no more than three). Examples include "c" for C source code, "ps" for PostScript, "txt" for arbitrary text. Apart from informing the user what type of content the file holds, filename extensions are typically used to decide which program to launch when a file is "run", e.g. by double-clicking it in a GUI file browser. They are also used by Unix's make to determine how to build one kind of file from another. Compare: MIME type.
  • finite-dimensional — (of a vector space) having a basis consisting of a finite number of elements.
  • fire and brimstone — When people talk about fire and brimstone, they are referring to hell and how they think people are punished there after death.
  • fire-and-brimstone — threatening punishment in the hereafter: a fire-and-brimstone sermon.
  • first and foremost — primarily
  • first-in first-out — (algorithm)   (FIFO, or "queue") A data structure or hardware buffer from which items are taken out in the same order they were put in. Also known as a "shelf" from the analogy with pushing items onto one end of a shelf so that they fall off the other. A FIFO is useful for buffering a stream of data between a sender and receiver which are not synchronised - i.e. not sending and receiving at exactly the same rate. Obviously if the rates differ by too much in one direction for too long then the FIFO will become either full (blocking the sender) or empty (blocking the receiver). A Unix pipe is a common example of a FIFO. A FIFO might be (but isn't ever?) called a LILO - last-in last-out. The opposite of a FIFO is a LIFO (last-in first-out) or "stack".
  • fishing expedition — a legal proceeding mainly for the purpose of interrogating an adversary, or of examining his or her property and documents, in order to gain useful information.
  • fitness instructor — physical trainer, exercise teacher
  • floating partition — a partition running parallel to and between two joists and resting on blocking between them.
  • floating underflow — underflow
  • floating-rate note — a eurobond, often issued as a negotiable bearer bond, that has a floating rate of interest
  • fly in the face of — to move through the air using wings.
  • fob shipping point — FOB shipping point is a shipping term indicating that ownership of goods passes when they are transferred to the carrier.
  • for the time being — the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.
  • fore-edge painting — a technique of painting a picture on the fore edge of a book, often in such a manner that only when the pages are slightly fanned the picture is revealed.
  • foreign investment — investment from foreign countries
  • foreign-trade zone — free port (def 1).
  • forensic chemistry — the application of facts concerning chemistry to questions of civil and criminal law.
  • forensic scientist — science expert: provides evidence
  • forgive and forget — be reconciled
  • foundation garment — an undergarment, as a girdle or corset, worn by women to support or give shape to the contours of the body.
  • foundling hospital — an institutional home for foundlings.
  • fragmentation bomb — a bomb designed to break into many small, high-velocity fragments when detonated.
  • frequency function — probability density function (def 2).
  • fringe-toed lizard — an iguanid lizard, Uma notata, of sandy deserts of the western U.S. and Mexico, having a wedge-shaped snout and toes fringed with long, pointed scales.
  • front organization — business: cover-up
  • ftp software, inc. — (company)   Developers of the original PC/TCP Packet Driver specification. Address: 26 Princess St. Wakefield, MA 01880-3004. Telephone: +1 (617) 246 0900.
  • fulminating powder — powder that explodes by percussion.
  • functional disease — a disease in which there is an abnormal change in the function of an organ, but no structural alteration in the tissues involved (opposed to organic disease).
  • functional program — (language)   A program employing the functional programming approach or written in a functional language.
  • functional testing — (testing)   (Or "black-box testing", "closed-box testing") The application of test data derived from functional requirements without regard to how the system is implemented.
  • funding operations — the conversion of government floating stock or short-term debt into holdings of long-term bonds
  • gainful employment — an occupation that pays an income
  • galactic longitude — the angular distance in degrees measured eastward in the galactic plane from a radius drawn from the earth as center to the constellation Sagittarius.
  • galilean telescope — a refracting telescope that forms an erect image, consisting of an objective of relatively long focal length that causes light rays to converge and an eyepiece of short focal length that causes them to diverge.
  • gamma distribution — a continuous two-parameter distribution from which the chi-square and exponential distributions are derived, written Gamma (α. β), where α and β are greater than zero, and defined in terms of the gamma function
  • garbage collection — (programming)   (GC) The process by which dynamically allocated storage is reclaimed during the execution of a program. The term usually refers to automatic periodic storage reclamation by the garbage collector (part of the run-time system), as opposed to explicit code to free specific blocks of memory. Automatic garbage collection is usually triggered during memory allocation when the amount free memory falls below some threshold or after a certain number of allocations. Normal execution is suspended and the garbage collector is run. There are many variations on this basic scheme. Languages like Lisp represent expressions as graphs built from cells which contain pointers and data. These languages use automatic dynamic storage allocation to build expressions. During the evaluation of an expression it is necessary to reclaim space which is used by subexpressions but which is no longer pointed to by anything. This reclaimed memory is returned to the free memory pool for subsequent reallocation. Without garbage collection the program's memory requirements would increase monotonically throughout execution, possibly exceeding system limits on virtual memory size. The three main methods are mark-sweep garbage collection, reference counting and copying garbage collection. See also the AI koan about garbage collection.
  • garden loosestrife — any of various plants belonging to the genus Lysimachia, of the primrose family, having clusters of usually yellow flowers, as L. vulgaris (garden loosestrife) or L. quadrifolia (whorled loosestrife)
  • gastroenterologist — the study of the structure, functions, and diseases of digestive organs.
  • gene amplification — an increase in the frequency of replication of a DNA segment.
  • generating station — a power station
  • genetic algorithms — genetic algorithm
  • genetic counseling — the counseling of individuals with established or potential genetic problems, concerned with inheritance patterns and risks to future offspring.
  • geneva conventions — one of a series of international agreements, first made in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1864, establishing rules for the humane treatment of prisoners of war and of the sick, the wounded, and the dead in battle.
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