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beamful

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Etymology 1

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From beam +‎ -ful.

Adjective

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beamful (comparative more beamful, superlative most beamful)

  1. Beamy; radiant; luminous.
    • 1929, Walter Jerrold, Clare Armstrong Bridgman Jerrold, Five Queer Women, page 236:
      Let each succeeding page Still boast those charms, and luminate the age; So shall thy beamful fires with light divine, Rise to the sphere, and there triumphant shine.
    • 1941, George Jean Nathan, The bachelor life, page 120:
      And Monsieur Le Donkey's pleased beam is twice as beamful as it was over the stage business with the sauce.
    • 2001, Meg Tasker, Struggle and storm: the life and death of Francis Adams, page 57:
      I can recall the tall, slender man-boy, with the large beamful eyes, soft brown beard and moustache, long swinging stride, careless dress, lounging habits, and incessant oratory.

Etymology 2

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From beam +‎ -ful.

Noun

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beamful (plural beamfuls)

  1. A quantity in a beam (of wood, of light, etc)
    • 1944, Hesperia, page 186:
      Phialai of similar size would be divided into convenient " beamfuls " or weighing-lots.
    • 1981, National Lampoon - Volume 2, Issues 30-41, page 184:
      Susan committed those confused, tragic eyes of hers to me, fixing on rhy stare, perhaps for some optical beamful of compassion.
    • 2006, Lisa Selvidge, The Trials of Tricia Blake, page 9:
      Behind the olde worlde postcard village, the timbers are rotting away by the beamful and the corpses are piling up.
    • 2008, Elias Lönnrot, The Kalevala:
      He set off to get some words take some mysteries: he cut a field of reindeer open a big beamful of squirrels; from there he got many words— all of them useless.
    • 2011, Tim Pears, Landed, page 205:
      A rider on a horse approaches: a torch attached to saddle or bridle illuminates a beamful of plummeting needles of rain, as if to reveal them rather than clarify the way forward for the rider.