creelful

English

Etymology

From creel +‎ -ful.

Noun

creelful (plural creelfuls or creelsful)

1. The amount that fills a creel.
   • 1807 February, D., “On the Cultivation of Kelp”, in The Farmer’s Magazine: A Periodical Work, Exclusively Devoted to Agriculture and Rural Affairs, volume VIII, number XXIX, Edinburgh: […] D[avid] Willison, […] for Arch[ibald] Constable & Co. […], branch I (Original Communications), page 45:

     Of courſe, a Scots acre ſhould produce about 1653 creelfuls, weighing about 44 tons 12 cwt., which, according to the above opinion of kelpers, would produce about 1 ton and 14 cwt. of kelp of 21 cwt. per ton, which is about 13 cwt. more p. acre than the reſult of the above manufacture.

   • 1862 October 1, “Art[icle] II.—The British Sea-Fisheries.”, in The Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review, volume XXII, number II, London: Trübner & Co., […], footnote, page 325:

     The wives of the Newhaven fishermen carry the fish caught by their husbands to Edinburgh, a distance of about two miles, in wicker baskets, or creels, on their shoulders and hawk them about the streets to the musical refrain of “Caller Haddies;” at night the fisher girls go about with creelsful of oysters in the same way, their cry being “Caller Ou.”

   • 1884 August 9, “The Member’s Nightmare”, in Vanity Fair: A Weekly Show of Political, Social, & Literary Wares, volume XXXII, London, page 95, column 1:

     He’s luring the salmon to rise at the fly, / He’s catching the trout by the creelful; / He’s shooting the pheasant to put in the pie, / And of wild-duck he’s getting a mealful.

   • 1978, Ernest Schwiebert, “Field Problems in Fishing Lakes, Ponds, and Reservoirs”, in Trout, volume II, New York, N.Y.: E.P. Dutton, →ISBN, page 1487:

     Sometimes these little ponds were generous, and I remember the time that Frank Klune and I caught such creelsful of big brook trout from the beaver ponds on Empire Creek that we were arrested and accused of poaching a lake belonging to the mayor of Leadville.

   • 2005, David Craig, chapter 52, in The Unbroken Harp, Dunbeath, Caithness: Whittles Publishing, →ISBN, page 300:

     Between them they had carried the packages of paintings and drawings the three miles to Ardessie, two creelsful, burdens that made them breathe heavily.

   • 2014, Ian Stephen, “Torcuil’s Olman”, in A Book of Death and Fish, Glasgow: Saraband, →ISBN, book 1 (Migrations), page 55:

     Then creelfuls of darker peat, broken smaller, were just piled inside.