knotful

comparative more knotful · superlative most knotful

1. Full of knots; knotty.

   Is't more knotful or bewildered than the skein o'life itself, that a good tale tangles the better to unsnarl?

   2001, Lahsen Benaziza, Romancing Scheherazade: John Barth and the One thousand and one nights

   1 more example

   Clear your coil of kinkings Into perfect plaiting, Locking loops and linkings Interpenetrating. Why should a man benighted, beduped, befooled, besotted, Call knotful knittings plighted, Not knotty but beknotted?

   1882, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, page 649

plural knotfuls

1. A quantity that makes up a knot.

   He pulled a knotful of hundred-dollar bills out of his pocket and handed one to her.

   2016, Ashley Antoinette, Luxe Two: A La La Land Addiction

   3 more examples

   The lice had eaten their way through her rotting flesh, leaving a skeleton double-row of teeth, and of a once proud neck, a knotful of tendons and veins.

   1977, Ka-tzetnik, Sunrise over hell, page 200

   Al was a knotful of butterflies by the time his music struck up and he had forced himself to dance out on to the stage apron.

   2007, Michael Freedland, Jolson: The Story of Al Jolson, page 51

   The leather went whistling through TJ's hands, leaving thin, twin bands of neatly polished skin, until the branch tore loose and a knotful of splintered wood jammed there, bloodying both his palms.

   2014, Ken Grant, The Deer Mouse