coatful

plural coatfuls · plural coatsful

1. The amount that a coat can hold.

   And here we walk in the house with two coatfuls and armfuls of these bulbs.

   1981, Michael Jackson, Jessica Jackson, Bruce Jackson, Your father's not coming home any more, page 53

   1 more example

   Instead of using the coat to batter the threat away, he used its length and bulk like a huge net. He cast it out, scooping coatfuls of the fluttering horde out of the air.

   2013, James Rollins, Rebecca Cantrell, Innocent Blood, →ISBN

2. A quantity that is contained within a coat.

   A coatful of wind is called an admiral.

   1930, Life - Volume 96, page 8

   5 more examples

   Two Negro women were being held after a patrolman on downtown duty watched them unload coatsful of items into a parked Cadillac.

   1970 January 19, George Whittington, “Under Eyes of Police: Burglars, Shoplifters Have Hard Time Over Weekend”, in The Clarion-Ledger, volume CXXX, number 249, Jackson, Miss., page 1

   On the outskirts of town, in streetlight like wet straw flung down, off to the side on the corner, a shivering coatful of woes: a man, hunkered down like a pile of dirt, but winter still steps on his toes

   1997, Attila József -, Winter Night: Selected Poems of Attila József, page 64

   A few moments like this could make the day a lot more glorious than a coatful of birds ever could.

   2010, Jay Cassell, The Best Hunting Stories Ever Told, →ISBN, page 192

   Within easy reach of his right hand lay a coatful of rocks culled from the road-bed, no mean weapons against figures silhouetted by the lamp-lighted windows of the buildings facing the right-of-way; and close to them were half a dozen dynamite cartridges, their wicked black fuses capped and inserted.

   2015, Clarence E. Mulford, Tex: A Hopalong Cassidy Novel, →ISBN, page 267

   A girl who thinks nothing of smuggling a coatful of drugs across two national borders whilst escaping a murder scene with the prime suspect.

   2017, Adam Croft, Only the Truth

3. A quantity that sits on a coat.

   With this coatful of painful weapons, it is not surprising that a porcupine has few enemies.

   1987, Laima Dingwall, Porcupines, →ISBN, page 23

   3 more examples

   And when Franz Liszt sat down at the piano, sporting shoulder-length hair and a coatful of glittering medals, the ladies threw their jewels onto the stage, battled over his gloves and even his cigar butts, and of course swooned.

   1977, Charles Veley, Catching up, page 149

   Besides, how is the Oxford ethos going to cope with Business Studies? It is well-known that even the spikiest scientist, the acned misanthrope with a coatful of ballpoint pens, gets softened and blurred in his first term on an Oxford High Table.

   1987, Punch - Volume 293, Issues 7662-7669, page xxviii

   The dog with the lame paw emerged now from the river and after limping over to Adriane, shook off a coatful of Ganges water and dropped his stick in front of her.

   2006, Paul Mandelbaum, Adriane on the Edge, →ISBN, page 241