gloveful

English

Etymology

glove +‎ -ful

Noun

gloveful (plural glovefuls or glovesful)

1. As much as a glove can hold.

   She could stand on a rocky surface, scoop up a gloveful of dirt, and explore extinct volcanoes and ancient canyons.

   • 1938 February 26, Ken Frogley, “Peters TKOs Drouillard In 6th Round”, in Daily News, volume 15, number 153, Los Angeles, Calif., page 15:

     [Abe] Roth stepped between the boys, the fans thinking he was going to stop the slaughter. He didn’t and [Nick] Peters threw in 15 glovesful that dropped [Orville] Drouillard for nine.

   • 1942 February 8, “Bout-by-Bout With Glovers”, in The Daily Oklahoman, Oklahoma City, Okla., pages four—B:

     On a clouting keynote the bout sprung underway, each man ripping across gloves[-]ful of punishment in neutral corners.

   • 1947 April 1, W. Vernon Tietjen, “Fitzpatrick Hands Jim Richie First Defeat In 16 Bouts: St. Louisan Is Down For Nine In 9th Round”, in St. Louis Star-Times, volume 61, number 154, St. Louis, Mo., page 22:

     But against Louis or any other first flight heavyweight? Not with two glovesful of cast iron shamrocks.

   • 1980 February 15, Hubert Mizell, “Unknown Austrian skier Stock suddenly is hero”, in St. Petersburg Times, volume 96, number 206, St. Petersburg, Fla., page 1c:

     [Klaus] Weisman picked up two glovesful of snow and whirled it into the air.

   • 1990 July 1, Ethan Canin, “The Scientific Method”, in Los Angeles Times Magazine, page 10:

     Hundreds of earwigs and silverfish and slate-gray potato bugs scrambled in the glovesful of dirt I lifted from the pile and then sorted over a mayonnaise jar behind the back porch.

   • 1995, Donald Dewey, Nicholas Acocella, The Biographical History of Baseball, New York, N.Y.: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., →ISBN, page 273:

     Called the greatest player of all time by Babe Ruth, [John Henry] Lloyd was an itinerant shortstop in the Negro leagues who reminded more than one observer of Honus Wagner, not least for the way both scooped glovesful of infield dirt with each ground ball.