basinful

plural basinfuls · plural basinsful

1. As much as a basin will hold.

   1748, Robert James, A Dissertation on Fevers and Inflammatory Distempers, London: Francis Newbery, Junior, 8th edition, 1778, p. 139, Of this chicken-water it is very proper to drink a small bason-full at a time, during the operation of the Powder, and more especially if the patient be sick.

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   It would have been better, as it turned out, to have led gently up to this announcement, for Mrs. Micawber, being in a delicate state of health, was overcome by it, and was taken so unwell, that Mr. Micawber was obliged, in great trepidation, to run down to the water-butt in the backyard, and draw a basinful to lave her brow with.

   1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 27, in The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC

   1853, Robert Browning, letter dated at Bagni di Lucca, 20 August, 1853, in Mrs. Sutherland Orr (ed.), Life and Letters of Robert Browning, London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1891, p. 196, We are enjoying the mountains here—riding the donkeys in the footsteps of the sheep, and eating strawberries and milk by basinsful.

   The family once saw a little girl getting a bath, sitting out in the sun on an inverted jar, while her mother poured basinfuls of water over her and rubber her with her hands.

   1907, Mary Wright Plummer, chapter 17, in Roy and Ray in Mexico, New York: Henry Holt & Co, page 206

   Although nothing physical was missing from any one of their eighteen faces yet it would be impossible to perceive the faintest sign of animation and, even if a basinful of their features had been shaken together and if each feature had been picked out at random and stuck upon some dummy-head of wax at any capricious spot or angle, it would have made no difference, for even the most fantastic, the most ingenious of arrangements could not have tempted into life a design whose component parts were dead.

   1946, Mervyn Peake, “The Great Kitchen”, in Titus Groan, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode