puddleful
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Noun
[edit]puddleful (plural puddlefuls)
- As much as a puddle can contain.
- 1875 August 22, The Observer, number 4,396, London, page 5:
- The responsible “we” testifies to having seen a puddleful of hair, like snakes, produced from the decomposition therein of a cow’s tail, and, with great naiveté, wonders whether the development of organic life in hairs placed in water with their roots is a fact known to science.
- 1879, Emily Hartley, “Stocking an Aquarium”, in Odd Moments of the Willoughby Boys, Philadelphia, Pa.: American Sunday-School Union, […], page 131:
- “[…] By the way, I wonder where we can find any tadpoles?” “I know,” exclaimed Reed, rising quickly from the grass, on which he had again flung himself. “There’s a great puddleful of ’em up the road a piece; come along and I’ll show you.”
- 1881 December 15, The Rescue, volume XIX, number 7, San Francisco, Calif., page 98:
- If we were to carry a jug of some unclean liquid, half as filthy as tobacco spittle, and from its spout pour the contents, here a little and there a good deal, after the manner in which the slaves of the weed eject from their mouths puddlefuls of the unsightly expectoration, we would be denounced as unclean.
- 2002 August 6, “Stung by the PR bug?”, in The Sault Star, volume 90, number 120, Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., page A4:
- A tuna can full of water can produce mosquitoes; a puddleful can produce more mosquitoes; a swamp can produce lots more mosquitoes; Northern Ontario, which boasts an abundance of water, produces enough mosquitoes to annoy everybody.