desertful

English

Etymology 1

From desert +‎ -ful.

Adjective

desertful (comparative more desertful, superlative most desertful)

1. (obsolete) deserving; meritorious

Etymology 2

From desert +‎ -ful.

Noun

desertful (plural desertfuls or desertsful)

1. Enough to fill a desert.
   • 1904, Rudyard Kipling, Traffics and Discoveries:

     I ought to have been a naturalised burgher of a year's standing; but Ohio's my State, and I wouldn't have gone back on her for a desertful of Dutchmen.

   • 1972 April 7, Trevor Lautens, “Leisure’s Book Reviews”, in The Sun, volume LXXXVI, number 157, Vancouver, B.C., page 34^A:

     Nothing but sand. Desertsful of the stuff.

   • 1982 May 23, “Star Publications’ 1982 Public Fee Area Golf Guide”, in Inside (Tinley Park Star Herald), page 2:

     THE COURSE ALSO features lakes and streams that come into play on the majority of the holes and desertsful of sand.

   • 1998, Art Bell, The Art of Talk, page 158:

     I find the show amazingly entertaining, though much of what is discussed has to be taken with a desertful of salt.

   • 2008, Debra Galant, Fear and Yoga in New Jersey, New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, →ISBN, page 98:

     But like just about everybody else in their cozy little suburb, with the big Victorian houses that guzzled desertfuls of heating oil each winter, they were house poor, oil poor, tax poor.

   • 2017, Frances W. Pritchett and Owen T. A. Cornwall, editors and translators, Ghalib: Selected Poems and Letters‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, →ISBN:

     Thanks to the symmetry of Urdu grammar, the second line could also be read, “A doormat is a desertful of rose-glory.” But of course, to measure the glory of roses in “desertfuls” means there really may not be much of it at all.

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