18-letter words containing p
- family-size packet — a packet large enough to be suitable for a family
- faraday dark space — the dark region between the negative glow and the positive column in a vacuum tube occurring when the pressure is low.
- farewell-to-spring — a slender, showy plant, Clarkia amoena, of the evening primrose family, native to western North America, having satiny, cup-shaped, lilac-crimson or reddish-pink flowers and roundish fruit.
- farmer-labor party — a political party in Minnesota, founded in 1920 and merged with the Democratic Party in 1944.
- feeping creaturism — /fee'ping kree"ch*r-izm/ A deliberate spoonerism for creeping featurism, meant to imply that the system or program in question has become a misshapen creature of hacks. This term isn"t really well defined, but it sounds so neat that most hackers have said or heard it. It is probably reinforced by an image of terminals prowling about in the dark making their customary noises.
- fermat's last post — (humour) A post to a bug tracker, mailing list or forum in which the author claims to have found a simple fix or workaround for a bug, but never says what it is and never shows up again to explain it (even after others have been puzzling over the bug for years).
- fermat's principle — Optics. the law that the path taken by a ray of light in going from one point to another point will be the path that requires the least time.
- field independence — a psychological trait associated with having an internal locus of orientation (contrasted with field dependence).
- financial planning — the devising of a program for the allocation and management of finances and capital through budgeting, investment, etc.
- fish and chip shop — In Britain, a fish and chip shop is a shop which sells hot food such as fish and chips, fried chicken, sausages, and meat pies. The food is cooked in the shop and people take it away to eat at home or in the street.
- 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.
- flat address space — (architecture) The memory architecture in which any memory location can be selected from a single contiguous block by a single integer offset. Almost all popular processors have a flat address space, but the Intel x86 family has a segmented address space. A flat address space greatly simplifies programming because of the simple correspondence between addresses (pointers) and integers.
- flat-panel display — a type of thin, lightweight video display that uses liquid crystals or electroluminescence to reflect images.
- floating partition — a partition running parallel to and between two joists and resting on blocking between them.
- flowers of sulphur — minute crystals of sulphur obtained by condensing sulphur vapour on a cold surface
- fob shipping point — FOB shipping point is a shipping term indicating that ownership of goods passes when they are transferred to the carrier.
- football supporter — a person who supports a particular football team
- forced development — the processing of underexposed photographic film to increase the image density
- forced perspective — the use of objects or images that are larger or smaller than they should be, to suggest that they are nearer or further away than they really are
- 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.
- forward compatible — forward compatibility
- foundling hospital — an institutional home for foundlings.
- four-color problem — the problem, solved in 1976, of proving the theorem that any geographic map can be colored using only four colors so that no connected countries with a common boundary are colored the same color.
- free-range poultry — poultry kept in natural nonintensive conditions
- frequency response — the effectiveness with which a circuit, device, or system processes and transmits signals fed into it, as a function of the signal frequency.
- frequency spectrum — The frequency spectrum of an electrical signal is the distribution of the amplitudes and phases of each frequency component against frequency.
- from the ground up — the solid surface of the earth; firm or dry land: to fall to the ground.
- from the housetops — publicly and widely
- from top to bottom — highest point to lowest
- 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 program — (language) A program employing the functional programming approach or written in a functional language.
- funding operations — the conversion of government floating stock or short-term debt into holdings of long-term bonds
- funeral procession — ceremonial cortège at a burial
- gainful employment — an occupation that pays an income
- 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.
- gas chromatography — a chromatograph used for the separation of volatile substances.
- gas plasma display — (electronics) A type of display containing super-energised neon gas, used mostly in flat monitor and television screens. Each pixel has a transistor that controls its colour and brightness.
- gas-permeable lens — a semisoft contact lens, usually removed each day, that allows air to pass through to the eye and affords a wider range of vision corrections than a soft contact lens.
- gene amplification — an increase in the frequency of replication of a DNA segment.
- general precession — the precession that results from both lunisolar precession and planetary precession; precession of the equinoxes.
- gensym corporation — (company) A company that supplies software and services for intelligent operations management. Common applications include quality management, process optimisation, dynamic scheduling, network management, energy and environmental management, and process modelling and simulation. Their products include G2.
- geometrical optics — the branch of optics dealing with light as rays, especially in the study of the effects of lenses and mirrors on light beams and of their combination in optical instruments.
- gestalt psychology — (sometimes lowercase) the theory or doctrine that physiological or psychological phenomena do not occur through the summation of individual elements, as reflexes or sensations, but through gestalts functioning separately or interrelatedly.
- get one's irish up — of, relating to, or characteristic of Ireland, its inhabitants, or their language.
- get the upper hand — gain advantage
- giant peacock moth — the largest European moth, an emperor, Saturnia pyri, reaching 15 cm (6 in.) in wingspan. It is mottled brown with a prominent ocellus on each wing and being night-flying can be mistaken for a bat
- giuseppe garibaldi — Giuseppe [juh-sep-ee;; Italian joo-zep-pe] /dʒəˈsɛp i;; Italian dʒuˈzɛp pɛ/ (Show IPA), 1807–82, Italian patriot and general.
- give a person five — to greet or congratulate someone by slapping raised hands
- give sb the creeps — If someone or something gives you the creeps, they make you feel very nervous or frightened.