sledgeful

English

Etymology

From sledge +‎ -ful.

Noun

sledgeful (plural sledgefuls)

1. Enough to fill a sledge.
   • 1870 January, “Thawed Out”, in Putnam’s Magazine. Original Papers on Literature, Science, Art, and National Interests., volume V, number XXV, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam & Sons, page 64:

     And so we all sat down again, and stared at him and at each other in helpless, hopeless bewilderment, until suddenly a German of the company, an odd fellow full of crotchets, who had lumbered the expedition with a whole sledgeful of private baggage, sprang up, lighted a torch, and darted out of the cavern as though possessed with a new idea.

   • [1907], “Runo XXXI.—Untamo and Kullervo”, in W[illiam] F[orsell] Kirby, transl., Kalevala: The Land of Heroes (Everyman’s Library; edited by Ernest Rhys), volume two, London: J. M. Dent & Co.; New York, N.Y.: E. P. Dutton & Co., page 72, lines 151–156:

     So they gathered and collected / First a large supply of birch-trees, / Pine-trees with their hundred needles, / Trees from which the pitch was oozing, / And of bark a thousand sledgefuls, / Ash-trees, long a hundred fathoms.

   • 1993, Jilly Cooper, The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous, BCA, page 440:

     Horses with bells jangling on their bridles, which reminded her of Arthur, were pulling sledgefuls of tourists along the High Street.