courtful

plural courtsful · plural courtfuls

1. As much as a court would hold.

   It Includes poems by Elizabeth, who had to keep control of her courtful of poetically competing males.

   2010, Ruth Padel, Sir Walter Ralegh, Faber & Faber, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   Worldly little devil, I would stand about, musingly fitting my cold bare feet into cracked bricks and crevices of the damp cellar floor, – walking over my grandfather's body, so to speak, into the courtful of houses, and selling them for meat and drink, and clothes to wear.

   1892, Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Reprinted Pieces, and Other Stories, page 336

   When there is more than one character in the scene, as is so frequently the case with Shakespeare (where there can be a whole courtful of people for you to deal with), then place the different characters in widely different locations on stage, giving them each a single simple attitude toward you that you are either combatting or using as agreement.

   1978, Michael Shurtleff, Audition: Everything an Actor Needs to Know to Get the Part, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, →ISBN, page 136