Words that start with F

A fort is a military structure used for defense against an enemy. Forts are usually large stone buildings surrounded by water or walls.

When an animal or plant dies and is buried under the ground with the right conditions for thousands or even millions of years, it turns to stone. Later when we dig them back up, we call them a fossil. When something has been turned into a fossil it is fossilised.
People have found fossils of all sized creatures, from tiny sea snails, to frogs, right up to enormous dinosaurs. Most of the creatures that people find as fossils are extinct - you can no longer see a living animal of that kind.
The fossil in the picture is a trilobite.

A fount is a water source, like a spring, often capped with a decorative spout. It is also a shortened form of fountain.

There are four geese in the picture. If you cut something into four pieces, you get quarters. The number before four is three. The number that comes after four is five.

A fowl is a domesticated farmyard bird. A fowl usually means a chicken but can also mean ducks, turkeys and pheasants.

The digitalis, or foxglove, is a very attractive garden plant that has flowers in various shades of pink. It is a biennial, native to western Europe and parts of Asia and Africa.
The entire plant is toxic, from roots to flowers. It is toxic fresh and dried, and if you have a vase of foxglove flowers, the water in the vase will be toxic too. A large enough dose will kill you, smaller doses cause hallucinations, nausea and severe headaches. It is toxic to people and animals, including cats and dogs.

A fracture is a break in a bone or other hard part of the body. The picture is an x-ray of a cat who has a fractured leg.

A frame is a rigid structure that is built to go around the edge of something. Picture frames are a pretty way of surrounding a picture. Frames for a building are put in place to mark out where the walls and other structures go, and to support the structure as the spaces are filled in with bricks or other materials.

Fabric frays when it starts to come undone, and starts to turn back into the individual strands it was made from.
A fray is also a battle or fight, and is often used as a turn of phrase when you are about to go into the middle of some activity, eg "he stepped into the fray".

Freckles are brown spots that you usually get on your nose and cheeks but can appear anywhere that sunshine can reach. Freckles are most common in people with very pale skin, especially people with ginger hair.