coffinful

English

Etymology

coffin +‎ -ful

Noun

coffinful (plural coffinfuls or coffinsful)

1. The contents of a coffin.
   • 1831, Thomas Ken, The retired Christian exercised in divine thoughts, and heavenly meditations, page 167:

     My father, not many years since as healthy as myself, is dead, and lies yonder a coffinful of dust.

   • 1949, Osbert Sitwell, Death of a God, and Other Stories, page 102:

     Little processions of black-clothed croupiers, with down-turned eyes, like the mutes at a funeral, marched through the rooms, guarding a coffinful of counters.

   • 1976, Somhairle MacGill-Eain, Donald MacAulay, Modern Scottish Gaelic poems: a bilingual anthology, page 164:

     Although Calvin came he did not steal that love out of your heart: you loved the tawny moor, and suffered pain when that land and the flower were taken from you, and a coffinful of songs was laid in the earth.

   • 2008, David Bilsborough, A Fire in the North, →ISBN:

     Gapp screamed inside his head, his skin crawling as if he lay in a coffinful of maggots, No bloody danger?

   • 2018, W. Carter Platts, Angling Done Here! A Strictly Veracious History, →ISBN:

     A few days afterwards the coroner's jury sat on a coffinful of old brickbats and fragments of bed-clothes and boots and brace buttons and bits of Eli, and after a long discussion, came to the only conclusion possible, viz., that the deceased's death was attributable to a general breaking up of the system.

2. The amount that a coffin can hold.
   • 2009, Katherine Kurtz, Tales of the Knights Templar, →ISBN:

     Other people can slow their breathing to where they can make a coffinful of air last a week.