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cloudful

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Etymology 1

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From Middle English cloudeful, equivalent to cloud +‎ -ful.

Adjective

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cloudful (comparative more cloudful, superlative most cloudful)

  1. Abounding with clouds, clouded, cloudy.
    • 1888, Thomas Wright Hall, Correlation Theory of Chemical Action and Affinity, page 70:
      From the waterless land and flora, in the thundery landscape, the drying pitch of dayshine, the shine that was parching [] has actually there contracted suddenly vast masses of thunder clouds, into the thick thunder rainfall, from the cloudful sky.
    • 1915, Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar:
      Or does some brighter spirit, un forlorn,
      Send you, my little sister of the wood,
      To say to some one on a cloudful morn,
      "Life lives through death, my brother, all is good ?"
    • 1923, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1923:
      Cities at night, and cloudful skies, I've wanted; []
  2. (by extension) Dark, dimmed; troubled, turbid.
    • 1847, New Quarterly Review; Or, Home, Foreign and Colonial Journal:
      His words, accordingly, proceeding from a mind "in a dark, hot, cloudful state," were "metallic, meteoric, ball-like."

Etymology 2

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From cloud +‎ -ful.

Noun

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cloudful (plural cloudfuls or cloudsful)

  1. The amount contained in a cloud.
    • 1848, Thomas Tod Stoddart, Angling Reminiscences, page 52:
      One might suppose himself angling in Lake Avernus, with a cloudful of hobgoblins on each side of him!
    • 2014, John Dickson Carr, Most Secret:
      A shuffling from the pit is drowned by the tumult of the top gallery, where the crowd whoops and whistles and stamps like a cloudful of angels on a spree.