streamful

comparative more streamful · superlative most streamful

1. poeticAbounding in streams, or in water.

   ... Now in the dimpled streamful ghyll, and now aloft Where leaden high rigg roads leap to a livid sky, Sour and solitary, royally will I.

   1919, The Cambridge Magazine - Volume 9, page 372

   4 more examples

   Thus like a ship, despoiled of her sails, Shov'd by the wind against the streamful tide, This way the one, that way the other hales, Now tow'rds this shore, and now tow'rds that doth ride,

   1595, The Legend of Piers Gaveston

   And if at first he fail, his second summersaut He instantly assays; and from his nimble ring, Still yerking, never leaves, until himself he fling Above the streamful top of the surrounded heap.

   1612, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion

   Loiguire the wealthy spent a space of four powerful years, before the coming of Patrick of the Pens, it was a streamful time for noble Ireland.

   1956, Robert Alexander, Stewart Macalister, Lebor gabála Érenn: The book of the taking of Ireland

   In the latter, most precious, most sacred and most streamful of spots, the storied Ivy Bridge spans the Glaishe Riabhach along whose leafy banks I made my first fumbling attempts at writing.

   1984, John B. Keane, Man of the triple name, page 8

plural streamfuls

1. Enough to fill or make up a stream.

   A streamful of sterile slime is before you and an arid plain behind you.

   1986, The Literary Half-yearly - Volumes 27-29

   3 more examples

   Our house was hot for him (not for us) , and his sweat glands would produce perspiration by the streamful.

   1958, Gleason H. Ledyard, And to the Eskimos, page 21

   Suddenly they were among many heads of hair, most of them below Reinhart's chin so that he seemed to be wading neck-deep in a streamful of swimming beaver.

   1982, Thomas Berger, Vital parts: a novel, page 164

   There was water, certainly, a whole streamful of it, but all of fifty feet away.

   2001, Walter Moers, The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear, page 229

2. A quantity that streams.

   Orr depended for sustenance on the streamful of smallfry created by Providence to feed the imperishably hopeful debtor. But even these waters sometimes ran sterile.

   1927, Samuel Ornitz, A Yankee Passional, page 345

   2 more examples

   No longer is each utterance like a piece of driftwood the speaker fished from a streamful of treasures, something cast off in the beyond that had just then washed up onto the beaches of the mind.

   1988, Ivan Illich, Barry Sanders, ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind, page 22

   I staggered on hearing Archaic Achilles babbling streamfuls of nonsense About a dainty slave and screeching like rapids and tumbling Over those invectives into his tent,

   2000, Edward Locke, One scowl upon sunlight, page 6