tavernful

plural tavernfuls

1. Enough to fill a tavern.

   One night after having astonished a tavernful with his drinking powers he came upon a watchman peacefully slumbering in his box, and threw box and man over the wall of a burial ground.

   1884 November 5, “Powerful Men. Some of the Feats Performed by Celebrated Characters.”, in The Daily Examiner, volume XXXIX, number 128, San Francisco, Calif.

   3 more examples

   Why not give the proof? But not like Professor Patterson, of Philadelphia, who said: “Hahnemann contradicts Euclid’s axiom, ‘the whole is greater than the part,’ because he insists that parts are more than the whole;” and his class laughed at this like a tavernful of voters at a pettifogger’s jest.

   1872 January, “Seven Notes on Hahnemann and his Absurdities”, in Rob[er]t J. McClatchey, editor, The Hahnemannian Monthly, volume VII, number 6, Philadelphia, Pa.: A. J. Tafel, page 252

   Humming the popular ballad we all had on the brain that winter (‘Tragic Johanna’, about a lass who took her broken heart to the banks of the Gudenæn: ‘deeper than Love ran that river, & deeper than Love did she drown’ – O, how little Johanna could set whole tavernfuls of grown men blubbing!), Herr Møller selected a loaf for me – not quite the best, I noted, but not the worst either, & wrapped it in a page of Berlingske Tidene.

   2006, Liz Jensen, My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time, Bloomsbury, →ISBN, page 7

   Later in the same act, references to war-activities, ‘documentary’ contributions, as it were, like radio talks on civil defence in the Second World War, are more business-like means than a tavernful of assorted accents of attracting interest and conveying practical suggestions.

   2011, I. L. McClelland, “A Propaganda Play of 1808: F. Enciso Castrillón’s La defensa de Valencia y castigo de traidores”, in Ann L. Mackenzie, editor, Hesitancy and Experimentation in Enlightenment Spain and Spanish America: Studies on Culture and Theatre in Memory of I. L. McClelland, Routledge