barful

English

Etymology

From bar +‎ -ful.

Adjective

barful (not comparable)

1. (archaic) Full of obstructions.

Noun

barful (plural barfuls or barsful)

1. Enough to fill a bar (drinking establishment).

   Synonym: barload

   • 1974, Mary Arkley Carter, A Member of the Family‎^[1], Doubleday, →ISBN, page 27:

     I want to go up to strangers on the street or people in my office and say “Please let me tell you about this very important thing that’s happened to me.” The way they say people in love want to shout it from the roof tops and new fathers buttonhole strangers with cigars and winners of lottery tickets want to buy barsful of strangers a round of drinks.

   • 1975, Michael Kernan, “What Is Ward Just Doing Writing These Tales When We All Know Nobody Reads Them Anymore, and Other Stories”, in Laura Longley Babb, editor, Writing in Style: From the Style Section of The Washington Post: A New Perspective on the People and Trends of the Seventies, Houghton Mifflin/Boston, →ISBN, page 9:

     There were also complaints from whole barsful of newspapermen, hacks and craftsmen alike, that this was the way they had been trying to write all along, only to be shot down by their desks.

   • 1999, Salon It's not funny November

     by the time he figured out that he would not have been required to stand and salute even if "Molly Malone" were the Irish national anthem, he already had a barful of drunken farmers laughing their Guinness-soaked heads off at him.