crawful

English

Etymology

craw +‎ -ful

Noun

crawful (plural crawfuls or crawsful)

1. As much (of something one dislikes) as one can accept.
   • 1950, Texas State CIO Council, Proceedings of the Annual Convention:

     1. Working conditions awful. 2. Wages unlawful. 3. Moses got his crawful.

   • 1993, Terrence Kilpatrick, Swimming Man Burning: A Rip-roaring Novel of the American West:

     The senator forever "working on" getting us in to see Sam—the President—while we waited and waited and waited, until, one day, a crawful, I decided to go out there and see Sam myself at the Palace ...

   • 2002, Dawn Keetley, John Pettegrew, Public Women, Public Words: 1960 to the present, page 76:

     It is this view of themselves and of white women that makes the preference of a black man for a white woman quite a crawful.

   • 2010, Theodore V. Olsen, The Stalking Moon:

     Would reckon you have had your crawful of this country by day or night."

2. Enough to fill the craw.
   • 1960, John William Robertson Scott, The Countryman - Volume 57, page 309:

     Then came the battle with the rooks, who will do anything for a crawful of maize.

   • 1973, Charlotte Stevenson, The Stevenson reference book, page 147:

     She gulped down a crawful of food and stalked off, trying to devise a way to outwit her pursuers.

   • 1991, Harold Gauer, The History: War and peace in the 1940's, page 199:

     Buyers of same (Vonier, Beebe, Ken Smith) will invade "Gauer's Midnite Ron De Voo" with a steaming bagful and partake of the host's wonderful glass coffee-maker brew and sit around until late, their kissers mashing crawsful of prune and icing dough, handing Gauer a lot of bunk, playing chess, or discussing the assinities of the atomic age.

   • 2006, Jean Lamore, AKA, page 399:

     I climb onto a dangling steel cable upon which groggy cormorants roost digesting crawfuls of contaminated gizzard shad.