combful

English

Etymology

From comb +‎ -ful.

Noun

combful (plural combfuls or combsful)

1. Enough to fill a comb (toothed implement).
   • 1860, [Charlotte Mary Yonge], chapter V, in Hopes and Fears; or, Scenes from the Life of a Spinster, volume I, London: John W. Parker and Son, […], page 240:

     Lucilla remained standing before the glass, arranging her wind-tossed hair; and, in her vehemence, tearing out combfuls, as she pulled petulantly against the tangled curls.

   • 1906 April 13, “Dandruff”, in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, volume 58, number 235, St. Louis, Mo., page 7:

     Is your hair coming out by great combsful? Every combful causing a pang of fear for the future.

   • 1973, Brian W[ilson] Aldiss, “Castle Scene with Penitents”, in Damon Knight, editor, Damon Knight’s Orbit 12: An Anthology of New Science Fiction Stories, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, page 95:

     Poseidon changed his position and lay stomach upward on my sister’s lap, so that it was now combsful of white fur which were released on the breezes to join the brown.

2. Enough to fill a honeycomb.
   • 1879 April 1, H. M. S., “Queries and Replies”, in Charles Nash Abbott, editor, The British Bee Journal, and Bee-Keeper’s Adviser, volume VI, number 72, Southall: […] the Office […]; London: Kent and Co., […], Query No. 300 (Small Swarm), page 235:

     If I were to order a small swarm of Ligurians, and on arrival give them half-a-dozen combfuls of brood, but clear of bees, from as many hives, of course they would do well; […]

   • 1890 June 5, Editor, “Bees in Malta”, in Thos. Wm. Cowan, W. Broughton Carr, editors, The British Bee Journal, Bee-Keepers’ Record and Adviser, volume XVIII, number 415, London: […] Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, & Co., Limited, […], page 273:

     The very few fertile workers we have been troubled with have never laid ‘several combsful of eggs, two or three in every cell,’ as yours did, but just a few in scattered cells here and there, two or three in a cell.

   • 1902 December 9, Arthur C. Miller, “Shaken Swarms. Something of the Origin, History and Practice of the New Fad.”, in The American Bee-Keeper, volume XIII, number 1, The W. T. Falconer Mfg. Co., published January 1903, page 3:

     Owing to the uncertainty of the weather along the New England seacoast I find it is much the safest plan to give the “swarm” a combful of honey, otherwise a cold storm may reduce a powerful and would-be profitable swarm to a mere handful of enfeebled bees.

   • 1922 August 19, George Weston, “The Maggot of Misty Mountain”, in The Saturday Evening Post, volume 195, number 8, Philadelphia, Pa.: The Curtis Publishing Company, page 5:

     She just smelled—well, say, like anemones in a teacup, or a breeze in a buttercupped meadow, or a combful of honey made in apple-blossom time, which is probably one of the sweetest scents of all.

   • 1923, Eugène Evrard, The Mystery of the Hive‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, page 239:

     This curve, recording the amounts of nectar collected, now falls still lower, day by day, with the evaporation of the last combs[-]ful of maturing honey.