puddleful

plural puddlefuls

1. As much as a puddle can contain.

   A tuna can full of water can produce mosquitoes; a puddleful can produce more mosquitoes; a swamp can produce lots more mosquitoes; Northern Ontario, which boasts an abundance of water, produces enough mosquitoes to annoy everybody.

   2002 August 6, “Stung by the PR bug?”, in The Sault Star, volume 90, number 120, Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., page A4

   3 more examples

   The responsible “we” testifies to having seen a puddleful of hair, like snakes, produced from the decomposition therein of a cow’s tail, and, with great naiveté, wonders whether the development of organic life in hairs placed in water with their roots is a fact known to science.

   1875 August 22, The Observer, number 4,396, London, page 5

   “[…]By the way, I wonder where we can find any tadpoles?” “I know,” exclaimed Reed, rising quickly from the grass, on which he had again flung himself. “There’s a great puddleful of ’em up the road a piece; come along and I’ll show you.”

   1879, Emily Hartley, “Stocking an Aquarium”, in Odd Moments of the Willoughby Boys, Philadelphia, Pa.: American Sunday-School Union, […], page 131

   If we were to carry a jug of some unclean liquid, half as filthy as tobacco spittle, and from its spout pour the contents, here a little and there a good deal, after the manner in which the slaves of the weed eject from their mouths puddlefuls of the unsightly expectoration, we would be denounced as unclean.

   1881 December 15, The Rescue, volume XIX, number 7, San Francisco, Calif., page 98