18-letter words starting with f

first duke of york — a member of the royal house of England that ruled from 1461 to 1485.
first things first — You say 'first things first' when you are talking about something that should be done or dealt with before anything else because it is the most important.
first year infants — a class for young children who have just started school
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".
fischer von erlach — Johann Bernhard [yaw-hahn bern-hahrt] /ˈyɔ hɑn ˈbɛrn hɑrt/ (Show IPA), 1656–1723, Austrian architect.
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.
fissure of rolando — central sulcus.
fissure of sylvius — lateral fissure.
fitness instructor — physical trainer, exercise teacher
fitzwilliam museum — a museum, attached to Cambridge University and founded in 1816, noted esp for its paintings and collections devoted to the applied arts
five hundred rummy — a variety of rummy in which the winner is the first player to score 500 points.
fixed-focus camera — a camera with an unadjustable focal length and with a relatively large depth of field.
fixed-radio access — Wireless Local Loop
fixed-term tenancy — a tenancy arrangement for a particular and fixed period
flame-of-the-woods — an Indian evergreen shrub, Ixora coccinea, of the madder family, having red, tubular flowers in dense clusters.
flash butt welding — a method of welding metal edge-to-edge with a powerful electric flash followed by the application of pressure.
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 file database — (database) A database containing a single table, stored in a single flat file, often in a human-readable format such as comma-separated values or fixed-width columns.
flat on one's back — lying supine
flat-bottomed rail — a rail having a cross section like an inverted T, with the top extremity enlarged slightly to form the head
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.
floating underflow — underflow
floating-rate note — a eurobond, often issued as a negotiable bearer bond, that has a floating rate of interest
flotsam and jetsam — the part of the wreckage of a ship and its cargo found floating on the water. Compare jetsam, lagan.
flower arrangement — floral display
flowers of sulphur — minute crystals of sulphur obtained by condensing sulphur vapour on a cold surface
fluegelman, andrew — Andrew Fluegelman
fluorescent screen — a transparent screen coated on one side with a phosphor that fluoresces when exposed to X-rays or cathode rays
fluorodeoxyglucose — (carbohydrate) A fluorine analog of glucose that is used in positron emission tomography.
fly in the face of — to move through the air using wings.
fly off the handle — a part of a thing made specifically to be grasped or held by the hand.
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
for good (and all) — for always; finally; permanently
for heaven's sake! — a mild exclamation of surprise, annoyance, etc.
for the hell of it — the place or state of punishment of the wicked after death; the abode of evil and condemned spirits; Gehenna or Tartarus.
for the life of me — If you say that you cannot for the life of you understand or remember something, you are emphasizing that you cannot understand or remember it, even if you try hard.
for the rest of us — (abuse) (From the Macintosh slogan "The computer for the rest of us") 1. Used to describe a spiffy product whose affordability shames other comparable products, or (more often) used sarcastically to describe spiffy but very overpriced products. 2. Describes a program with a limited interface, deliberately limited capabilities, non-orthogonality, inability to compose primitives, or any other limitation designed to not "confuse" a naïve user. This places an upper bound on how far that user can go before the program begins to get in the way of the task instead of helping accomplish it. Used in reference to Macintosh software which doesn't provide obvious capabilities because it is thought that the poor luser might not be able to handle them. Becomes "the rest of *them*" when used in third-party reference; thus, "Yes, it is an attractive program, but it's designed for The Rest Of Them" means a program that superficially looks neat but has no depth beyond the surface flash. See also point-and-drool interface, user-friendly.
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.
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.
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
forethoughtfulness — The condition of being forethoughtful.
forget-me-not blue — a shade of blue similar to the shade of the flowers of a forget-me-not

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