knotful
Appearance
English
[edit]Etymology 1
[edit]Adjective
[edit]knotful (comparative more knotful, superlative most knotful)
- Full of knots; knotty.
- 1882, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, page 649:
- Clear your coil of kinkings Into perfect plaiting, Locking loops and linkings Interpenetrating. Why should a man benighted, beduped, befooled, besotted, Call knotful knittings plighted, Not knotty but beknotted?
- 2001, Lahsen Benaziza, Romancing Scheherazade: John Barth and the One thousand and one nights:
- Is't more knotful or bewildered than the skein o'life itself, that a good tale tangles the better to unsnarl?
Etymology 2
[edit]Noun
[edit]knotful (plural knotfuls)
- A quantity that makes up a knot.
- 1977, Ka-tzetnik, Sunrise over hell, page 200:
- The lice had eaten their way through her rotting flesh, leaving a skeleton double-row of teeth, and of a once proud neck, a knotful of tendons and veins.
- 2007, Michael Freedland, Jolson: The Story of Al Jolson, page 51:
- Al was a knotful of butterflies by the time his music struck up and he had forced himself to dance out on to the stage apron.
- 2014, Ken Grant, The Deer Mouse:
- The leather went whistling through TJ's hands, leaving thin, twin bands of neatly polished skin, until the branch tore loose and a knotful of splintered wood jammed there, bloodying both his palms.
- 2016, Ashley Antoinette, Luxe Two: A La La Land Addiction:
- He pulled a knotful of hundred-dollar bills out of his pocket and handed one to her.