beamful

comparative more beamful · superlative most beamful

1. Beamy; radiant; luminous.

   And Monsieur Le Donkey's pleased beam is twice as beamful as it was over the stage business with the sauce.

   1941, George Jean Nathan, The bachelor life, page 120

   2 more examples

   Let each succeeding page Still boast those charms, and luminate the age; So shall thy beamful fires with light divine, Rise to the sphere, and there triumphant shine.

   1929, Walter Jerrold, Clare Armstrong Bridgman Jerrold, Five Queer Women, page 236

   I can recall the tall, slender man-boy, with the large beamful eyes, soft brown beard and moustache, long swinging stride, careless dress, lounging habits, and incessant oratory.

   2001, Meg Tasker, Struggle and storm: the life and death of Francis Adams, page 57

plural beamfuls

1. A quantity in a beam (of wood, of light, etc)

   Phialai of similar size would be divided into convenient " beamfuls " or weighing-lots.

   1944, Hesperia, page 186

   4 more examples

   Susan committed those confused, tragic eyes of hers to me, fixing on rhy stare, perhaps for some optical beamful of compassion.

   1981, National Lampoon - Volume 2, Issues 30-41, page 184

   Behind the olde worlde postcard village, the timbers are rotting away by the beamful and the corpses are piling up.

   2006, Lisa Selvidge, The Trials of Tricia Blake, page 9

   He set off to get some words take some mysteries: he cut a field of reindeer open a big beamful of squirrels; from there he got many words— all of them useless.

   2008, Elias Lönnrot, The Kalevala

   A rider on a horse approaches: a torch attached to saddle or bridle illuminates a beamful of plummeting needles of rain, as if to reveal them rather than clarify the way forward for the rider.

   2011, Tim Pears, Landed, page 205