mouthful

en-noun

mouthful (plural mouthfuls or mouthsful)

From Middle English mouthful, mouth-full, mouthe full, equivalent to mouth + -ful. Compare Dutch mondvol (“mouthful”), German Mundvoll (“mouthful”), Danish mundfuld (“mouthful”), Swedish munfull (“mouthful”), Icelandic munnfylli (“mouthful”). Compare also West Frisian mûlfol (“mouthful”).

“Unquestionably his metabolism is unduly susceptible to stresses resulting from the interaction of external excitations,” he said, and Bobbie patted him on the shoulder in a maternal sort of way, a thing I wouldn't have cared to do myself though our relations were, as I have indicated, more cordial than they had been at one time, and told him he had said a mouthful.

1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter VII:


boatload

/ˈbəʊtˌləʊd/

From boat + load. Notionally, because the commodity in question might have constituted the entire load of a cargo ship or boat.

He showed up an hour later with a whole boatload of hamburgers, chips, cookies, and assorted other munchies, not to mention sodas and beer, and we all fell in and stuffed ourselves silly.

What's a fair price to pay for video perfection, or even something that looks a lot like it? In the case of high-definition movie discs, the answer may not just be "a boatload of money," but having to keep two incompatible players under the TV set.

2006 December 10, Rob Pegoraro, “Waiting for the Winner of a High-Definition High Noon”, in The Washington Post:


cupful

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-cupful.wav

From Middle English copful, copfull, cupfulle, cuppefulle, equivalent to cup + -ful. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Kopful (“cupful”), West Frisian kopfol (“cupful”).


shovelful

shovelful (plural shovelfuls or shovelsful)

One shovelful of dirt makes a molehill; a million shovelfuls make a mountain.

Two workers each had a shovelful of snow. There were two shovelsful of snow.

As to the fireman, the sight of him at work, swinging round with his shovelful of coal and at the same moment lightly depressing his right heel and so working the pedal which causes the steam-operated firedoors to open like magic in front of the shovel, was always a pleasure.

1947 January and February, Cecil J. Allen, “British Locomotive Practice and Performance”, in Railway Magazine, page 39:

The doors are at the right level for firing, which normally is down one side of the firebox at a time, unlike our own practice, which is to fire each side of the firebox with alternate shovelfuls.

1961 February, 'Balmore', “Driving and firing modern French steam locomotives - Part One”, in Trains Illustrated, page 109:

The amount that can be moved at once with a shovel.


spadeful

spadeful (plural spadefuls or spadesful)

The amount held or moved by a spade at once.


lifeful

en-adj

lifeful (comparative more lifeful, superlative most lifeful)

more lifeful (comparative)
most lifeful (superlative)
lyfull (alternative)

Pupils are interested most in a variety of literary forms which consist of poetry and literature of a humorous and exciting nature, involving lifeful experiences.

1940, Rutgers University. School of Education, Trends in the Teaching of Reading:

Her mouth was moist and tasted of tobacco, and he could feel her heart beat, lifeful and sure, under the small rounds of her breasts.

1943, Vera Lebedeff, The Heart Returneth, page 156:

My view is that what we call feelings, things, sensations, values, moral directives, etc. are intimately linguistic but arc so only so far as they are humanly lifeful.

1973, Lee Thayer, Communication: Ethical and Moral Issues, page 307:

I regard [it] rather as a fundamentally normal, clean, lifeful instinct.

2014, Jonathan Eig, The Birth of the Pill:

Characteristic of life and living things.


leafful

“And here goes too!” cried Abraham; and we both, without hesitating any longer, emptied our bowls to the bottom; and so pure and delicious was the water that we emptied half a dozen leavesful more, and never felt a bit afraid that it would hurt us;[…]

1864, J[ohn] Ross Browne, “Ramble into the Interior”, in Crusoe’s Island: A Ramble in the Footsteps of Alexander Selkirk. With Sketches of Adventure in California and Washoe., New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], page 75:

[…]mulberries, served by leavesful, crushed with their own lusciousness;[…]

1891, Laura Daintrey, “A Fallen Queen”, in Murray’s Magazine. A Home and Colonial Periodical for the General Reader., volume X, London: John Murray, […], page 607:

When night came, and the village was quiet, some old woman brought me a leafful of rice.

1906, Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain:

How can one give any hint of the wonder of the bazaars, as we brush past the overhanging branches of the pipal tree, and long pugarees of many colours hanging on a line across the narrow ways to dry, the cook shops, with the appetising smell of frizzling meat, the bowls of boiling milk, the leavesful of strange confections of sugar and spice;[…]

1916 February 15, “Letters from India (Nᵒ. 4). From the Top of the Elephant. A Survey of Lahore.”, in The Western Daily Press, volume 116, number 18,097, Bristol, page 9:

The lemonade was just sweet enough, and Janey drank two large leavesful.

1922, Johnny Gruelle, “Johnny and Janey Meet the Strange Man”, in The Magical Land of Noom, New York, Boston, Toronto, Chicago: P. F. Volland Company, page 29:

So overcome was a large tree at the corner of Mayfield-road, Leicester, that it gulped in a few leavesful of reviving rain, and then sank slowly to the ground.

1929 July 4, “Long May It Keep Raining! Thunderstorm Ends Great Drought. People Caught Coatless. Lunch-Hour Rush for Shelter and Tramcars Besieged.”, in Leicester Mercury, section “Every Little Helps”, page 1:

Three leavesful of sap are poured on a cut to stop bleeding.

1974, Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution Press, page 245:

"[…] Better than anything I've had for a long time.” He settled to breaking and eating the rest while Akin brought another leafful to Iriarte.

2012, Octavia E. Butler, Lilith's Brood: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago:


nostrilful

en-noun

nostrilful (plural nostrilfuls or nostrilsful)

nostrilfuls (plural)
nostrilsful (plural)

Some of his contemporaries from other waters are greeted with nostrilsful of foul water, reeking of detergent and factory waste.

1969 February 15, “Angling: Cliff Parker says: It’s a wise salmon that knows its own father”, in The Birmingham Post, number 34,408, page III:

The amount of a substance that can fit in a nostril.


raftload

a raftload of refugees


eggshellful

eggshellful (plural eggshellfuls or eggshellsful)

eggshellfuls (plural)
eggshellsful (plural)

From Middle English egschelfull, egge schellefull, egge schelle ful, equivalent to eggshell + -ful.

Beat the white of one egg until stiff, add 1/2 of an eggshellful of cream and beat together well, add enough pulverized sugar to harden it so as to form in squares lay on pasteboard to harden.

1901, Queen of the Home: A Careful Compilation of Tried and Approved Recipes:

To make it, beat the whites of two eggs to a froth, add an equal quantity of cold water (measuring two half-eggshellsful), then gradually stir into this confectioners’ sugar until of a paste stiff enough to be molded with the fingers and retain its shape.

1909 November 26, “Candy Recipe”, in The Evening Star, number 17,959, Washington, D.C., page 5:

4 well beaten egg yolks, 5 half eggshellsful of sugar, 6 or 7 eggshellsful of good white wine.

After a pause, one of them ventured to hint that the first allowance of liquor had been drank out, so that "there did not remain an eggshellful to drink the health of the Captain."

2014, R. Shelton Mackenzie, Bits of Blarney, page 117:


worldful

worldful (plural worldfuls or worldsful)

As one writer put it: “Wealth is counted in worldsful of gold.[…]”

1935 August 28, Irving S. Cutter, “How to Keep Well: Paresis or Dementia”, in Chicago Daily Tribune, volume XCIV, number 206, page 10:

"[…]Entire worldsful of beings who look at yonder stars till it aches in them, and know that except for a few lucky individuals, none of them will ever get out there, nor will their descendants have any real say about the future, no, will instead remain nothing but potential victims—"

1963–1973, Poul Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader, Baen Books, published 2009:

As much or as many as would fill a world.


laneful

He had no taste for the northern plough; nor, on the other hand, did he intend to run his head against the laneful of carriage and foot folk, that apparently cut him off from the best of the Vale of Belvoir.

1935, William John Arthur Charles James Cavendish-Bentinck Duke of Portland, Memories of Racing and Hunting, page 203:

"Muuh, muuh, moo, moo," the calls came thick and fast. They sounded like a whole laneful of heifers.

He tells how the parson, in gown and cassock, "with the parish Bible in his hand, and a sickle strapped behind him," opens the harvest by leading a laneful of farmers, laborers, wives, and children to the first ripe field, where he heaves up the rail across the gate, offers a prayer, reads the Scripture, and then cuts the first three "swipes" of corn.

1979, Richard F. Hardin, Survivals of Pastoral, page 37:

Just then a crunching came to my ears; the crunching became a crashing, and round the corner of the birches dashed an agitated black mass, diving into the hollow, surging up over its crest, and roaring straight at me in full flight — a laneful of wildness!

1999, Herbert H. Wernecke, Celebrating Christmas Around the World, →ISBN, page 223:

Here beneath them the bloom of the golden-rod is upon the land; fieldsful and lanesful, it bars your way, or brushes your shoulders as you pass.

2016, Roy Rolfe Gilson, Miss Primrose: A Novel, page 172:


decadeful

decadeful (plural decadefuls or decadesful)

A retrospective gives us a decadeful of his watercolors.

1979 December 3, Nancy McKeon, “Best Bets”, in New York Magazine, volume 12, number 47, page 89:

Because really I've come to measure my life in decadefuls.

1983, N. C. Manganyi, Exiles and Homecomings: A Biography of Es'kia Mphahlele, page 287:

At first a performer, then a conductor in the musical theatre, Bratton later moved into the production of "dollar circuit" touring plays and musical comedies (The Dingbat Family, The Newlyweds and Their Baby, Let George Do It, etc), in partnership with Johnny Leffler, whilst also composing more than a decadeful of songs, which were used both as decoration for his own productions and, interpolated into musical comedies on both sides of the Atlantic, in those of others.

2001, Kurt Gänzl, The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre: A-Gi, page 241:

The moment has slipped free of time. It could exist in decadesful of instants.

2007, Joyelle McSweeney, Flet: A Novel, page 14:

The amount that fills or is produced in a decade.


hourful

en-adj

hourful (comparative more hourful, superlative most hourful)

more hourful (comparative)
most hourful (superlative)

And all I did was Moan and rise and moan And fall And pain away and break And slip In many hourful whiles.

Angley then drifts into his hourful, mouthful extempore, accentuated with refrains of "cast the demon away with the power of the Lord."

1981, The Diliman Review - Volume 29, page 74:

Timed perfectly for nearly nothing, the hourful day proceeds.

2004, Bruce Hamilton, 120 Paragraphs, page 68:


clusterful

clusterful (comparative more clusterful, superlative most clusterful)

more clusterful (comparative)
most clusterful (superlative)

We know from Linear B how awkward a syllabary is for a clusterful language — consonants are omitted, or otiose vowels intrude in the spelling -—— so a segmental orthography would be quite advantageous.

1992, Pamela A. Downing, Susan D. Lima, Michael Noonan, The Linguistics of Literacy, page 97:

Sranan, perhaps because it was spoken on the plantations alongside Dutch, a pretty clusterful language, grew more tolerant of clusters and dropped the first epenthetic vowel.

(linguistics) Having phonological rules that allow consonant clusters.


seasonful

en-noun

seasonful (plural seasonfuls or seasonsful)

Besides providing the rest of the league with a seasonful of entertainment, his persistent and vocal expression of this legislative miscarriage, admittedly articulate, paved the way for reforms in the BFFL's player eligibility rules.

1993, Bob Chon, Greg Colao, Sandy Faiella, The Ultimate Fantasy Football League: 1993 Guide and Handbook:

...with her synopses spanning a seasonful of the shows she had seen or a new outline she had just read.

2010, Wade Hall, The Kentucky Anthology: Two Hundred Years of Writing in the Bluegrass State:

After a seasonful of heated adventures in Greece, London is a great sigh Of prolific artistry.

2011, Emu Camel Drum, Sanity Inhibits Wisdom, page 64:

Anytime in winter, a day or two of spring weather is pure joy. Soon there will be a whole seasonful.

2012, Jean M. Hughes, Walking Around The Sun, page 69:

A quantity that lasts or is produced during a season.


compartmentful

compartmentful (plural compartmentfuls or compartmentsful)

compartmentfuls (plural)
compartmentsful (plural)

There they were, a train compartmentful, with their faces towards November Fair — what was left of it.

1991, Kate Roberts, Joseph P. Clancy, The World of Kate Roberts: Selected Stories, 1925-1981, page 93:

He is clean and young and straight and far removed from the shadow procession I watch night after night, the procession that came to me early this morning and wakened me shrieking in the presence of a compartmentful of shocked strangers.

2000, Angela K. Smith, Women's Writing of the First World War: An Anthology, page 68:

The revolving door metes out the aromas as two platinum-grey old dames totter in, rouged up to the eyeballs, expelling several door-compartmentsful of intense coffee aroma onto the street.

2004, The Hungarian Quarterly - Issues 173-176, page 71:

And the little compartmentful of cherry pie isn't bad.

2013, Thomas Berger, Being Invisible: A Novel:

A quantity sufficient to fill a compartment.


meterful

If well constructed the latter class are most certain as to accurate measurement, but the former possess the advantage of allowing an uninterrupted current of water to pass through, which of course the latter cannot do, as the inlet and outlet valves must alternately be opened and closed to allow each meterful to be discharged and the registering vessel to be refilled.

1869, Principles and Construction of Machinery: A Practical Treatise on the Laws of the Transmission of Power, and of the Strength and Proportions of the Various Elements of Prime Movers, Mill-work, and Machinery Generally ..., page 140:

Had I gone across the street to the brilliant premises of the Cut Rate Pharmaceutical where they burn electric light by the meterful I should no sooner have said “tooth-brush,” than one of the ten clerks in white hospital jackets would have poured a glittering assortment over the counter—prophylactic, lactic and every other sort.

1916, Stephen Leacock, Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy, London : J. Lane, the Bodley Head, page 185

The type of tree from which shields were made is not often identified in Latin epic, perhaps because the adjective for lindenwood in Latin was too much of a mouthful or meterful, but more likely because a difterent wood (namely, willow) was used in Italy.

2008, Jennifer R. Davis, Michael McCormick, The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval Studies, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., →ISBN, page 200:


salonful

To her salonful of male intellectuals and artists, she used to say: "With the majority of women whom we see and receive, it is not possible to have a sensible discourse."

1963, Sister Mary Estelle, Nuptials without love, page 108:

A whole salonful of artographers!

1988, Ted Orland, Scenes of Wonder & Curiosity:

An all-round terrific lady: sweet, compassionate, busty, pert-nosed, prone to floods of sudden tears, a lover of mini-skirts and tall leather boots and snug sweaters, which you somehow wore with total innocence, a worrier, a sweet ruminator by windows. a girl possessed of incredibly long. elegant eyelashes. and of course more flawlessly managed hair than a salonful of average girls could ever grow.

2008, Christopher Goffard, Snitch Jacket, page 74:


bakeryful

bakeryful (plural bakeryfuls or bakeriesful)

bakeryfuls (plural)
bakeriesful (plural)

As executive officer of MIT (also his alma mater), Stratton has a finger in a whole bakeryful of pies.

Inside the dark house, Billy bee-lined for the kitchen, where his grandmother would be putting the final touches on desk-size trays of lasagne, two-inch-thick pizza, veal parmagiana, and a bakeryful of pastries.

1974, Carolina Quarterly - Volumes 26-27, page 9:

At Tastings, I did something I swore I’d never do again: eat yet another stuffed croissant. It’s one of a limited number of lunch offerings, and without qualifications one of the very best in bakeriesful of mediocrities I’ve tasted recently.

1984 June 14, Lelia Albrecht, “City Market has many good, casual places to dine”, in Roanoke Times & World-News, volume 16, number 166, Roanoke, Va., pages C—3:

And here, above all, is Miss Hugonin, utilising the vast power of money - which I am credibly informed is a very good thing to have, though I cannot pretend to speak from experience - and casting whole bakeryfuls of bread upon the waters of charity.

2006, James Branch Cabell, The Eagle's Shadow, page 44:

Rina's resolve could stand firm against a bakeryful of muffins and a sea of marmalade—but against hot chocolate?

A quantity that would be supplied by a bakery.


quayful

a quayful of broken cargo

(nautical) As much or many as a quay can accommodate.


globeful

Even in her daze of misery she was conscious of that keen thrill as she stood in the radiance. Shaft of dense black above its center, quivering circles on the asphalt set in circles of black. Off into the city's heart the great globefuls of white fire marked wide way.

1918, Louise Dunham Goldsberry, “Out of the Depths”, in Ted: And Some Other Stories, Boston, M.A.: The Gorham Press, page 146:

The wonderful thing about a zoo is that you can see an entire globeful of nature's inventiveness in a few accessible acres.

1992, Janine M. Benyus, Beastly Behaviors: A Zoo Lovers Companion, Reading, M.A. […]: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 3:

Climbers a century ago had a globeful of far-flung, virgin summits for the pickings. The contest wasn't about bagging peaks but about facing an unknown, frozen monolith of ice and stone in gear little removed from streetwear.

2004 October 5, Jenny Dubin, “Serial summit disorder”, in Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Calif.: Los Angeles Times Communications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-09-25:

As much or as many as would fill a globe.