21-letter words containing t, o, a, f
- flotation compartment — in a boat, an enclosed section filled with air or gas to give buoyancy
- food conversion ratio — a ratio expressing the weight of food required to produce a unit gain in the live weight of an animal
- food standards agency — the full form of FDA
- foot-in-mouth disease — the habit of making inappropriate, insensitive, or imprudent statements.
- foreign exchange rate — the rate that specifies how much the currency of a nation is worth in terms of the currency of another nation
- forensic anthropology — the branch of physical anthropology in which anthropological data, criteria, and techniques are used to determine the sex, age, genetic population, or parentage of skeletal or biological materials in questions of civil or criminal law.
- fort lesley j. mcnair — a military reservation in SW Washington, D.C., on the Potomac River, SW of the Capitol.
- forward compatibility — (jargon) The ability to accept input from later versions of itself. Forward compatibility is harder to achieve than backward compatibility, since, in the backward case, the input format is know whereas a forward compatible system needs to cope gracefully with unknown future features. An example of future compatibility is the stipulation that a web browser should ignore HTML tags it does not recognise. See also extensible.
- forward exchange rate — the exchange rate of a currency to be delivered at a later date
- fractional extraction — Fractional extraction is a process of extracting a liquid from a liquid, in which two solutes are separated, with one leaving in the extract and one in the raffinate.
- fragmentation grenade — a grenade with a heavy metal casing that shatters, on exploding, into fragments that travel at high speed and with great force.
- framing specification — A specification of the "protocol bits" that surround the "data bits" on a communications channel to allow the data to be "framed" into chunks, like start and stop bits in EIA-232. It allows a receiver to synchronize at points along the data stream.
- franco-belgian system — French system.
- frankfort on the main — a city in W central Germany, on the Main River.
- frankfort on the oder — a city in NE Germany, on the Oder River.
- fraudulent conversion — conversion committed with the intent to defraud
- free-floating anxiety — chronic anxiety occurring for no identifiable cause
- french fried potatoes — a more formal name for chips
- frequent wash shampoo — a shampoo whose mildness allows it to be used frequently
- from dan to beersheba — from one end of Israel to the other: Judg. 20:1
- functional dependency — (database) Given a relation R (in a relational database), attribute Y of R is functionally dependent on attribute X of R and X of R functionally determines Y of R (in symbols R.X -> R.Y) if and only if each X in R has associated with it precisely one Y in R (at any one time). Attributes X and Y may be composite. This is very close to a function in the mathematical sense.
- functional illiterate — a person with some basic education who still falls short of a minimum standard of literacy or whose reading and writing skills are inadequate to everyday needs.
- functional imperative — a requirement for the survival of any social system, as communication, control of conflict, or socialization.
- game of cat and mouse — In a fight or contest, if one person plays cat and mouse, or a game of cat and mouse, with the other, the first person tries to confuse or deceive the second in order to defeat them.
- general of the armies — a special rank held by John J. Pershing, equivalent to general of the army.
- genetic amplification — an increase in the frequency of replication of a DNA segment.
- gentleman of the road — a highwayman.
- get/have the hots for — If you say that one person has the hots for another, you mean that they feel a strong sexual attraction to that person.
- glen of imaal terrier — a strongly-built medium-sized variety of terrier with a medium-length coat and short forelegs
- go (in) to bat for sb — If you go to bat for someone or go in to bat for them, you give them your support.
- ground-effect machine — ACV (def 2).
- have heard sth before — If you say that you have heard something before, you mean that you are not interested in it, or do not believe it, or are not surprised about it, because you already know about it or have experienced it.
- have the advantage of — benefit from: sth extra
- hay-pauncefote treaty — an agreement (1901) between the U.S. and Great Britain giving the U.S. the sole right to build a canal across Central America connecting the Atlantic and Pacific.
- highest common factor — greatest common divisor. Abbreviation: H.C.F.
- horns and halo effect — a tendency to allow one's judgement of another person, esp in a job interview, to be unduly influenced by an unfavourable (horns) or favourable (halo) first impression based on appearances
- host command facility — (operating system) (HCF) Used to access IBM S/36 and AS/400 computers from a mainframe.
- hubble classification — a method of classifying galaxies depending on whether they are elliptical, spiral, barred spiral, or irregular
- identification papers — documents that serve to establish someone's identity
- identification parade — a group of persons including one suspected of having committed a crime assembled for the purpose of discovering whether a witness can identify the suspect
- in (or out of) phase — in (or not in) a state of exactly parallel movements, oscillations, etc.; in (or not in) synchronization
- in (or out of) place — in (or out of) the customary, proper, or assigned place
- in a class of its own — unequalled; unparalleled
- in a state of undress — If someone is in a state of undress, they do not have all their clothes on.
- in favor/out of favor — If someone or something is in favor, people like or support them. If they are out of favor, people no longer like or support them.
- in phase/out of phase — If two things are out of phase with each other, they are not working or happening together as they should. If two things are in phase, they are working or occurring together as they should.
- infant mortality rate — number of babies dying
- infectious ectromelia — ectromelia (def 2).
- infiltration capacity — the maximum rate at which a soil in a given condition will absorb water.
- inflationary universe — a version of the big bang theory in which the universe underwent very rapid growth during the first fraction of a second before it settled down to its current rate of expansion.