beamful

English

Etymology 1

From beam +‎ -ful.

Adjective

beamful (comparative more beamful, superlative most beamful)

1. Beamy; radiant; luminous.
   • 1929, Walter Jerrold, Clare Armstrong Bridgman Jerrold, Five Queer Women, page 236:

     Let each succeeding page Still boast those charms, and luminate the age; So shall thy beamful fires with light divine, Rise to the sphere, and there triumphant shine.

   • 1941, George Jean Nathan, The bachelor life, page 120:

     And Monsieur Le Donkey's pleased beam is twice as beamful as it was over the stage business with the sauce.

   • 2001, Meg Tasker, Struggle and storm: the life and death of Francis Adams, page 57:

     I can recall the tall, slender man-boy, with the large beamful eyes, soft brown beard and moustache, long swinging stride, careless dress, lounging habits, and incessant oratory.

Etymology 2

beam +‎ -ful

Noun

beamful (plural beamfuls)

1. A quantity in a beam (of wood, of light, etc)
   • 1944, Hesperia, page 186:

     Phialai of similar size would be divided into convenient " beamfuls " or weighing-lots.

   • 1981, National Lampoon - Volume 2, Issues 30-41, page 184:

     Susan committed those confused, tragic eyes of hers to me, fixing on rhy stare, perhaps for some optical beamful of compassion.

   • 2006, Lisa Selvidge, The Trials of Tricia Blake, page 9:

     Behind the olde worlde postcard village, the timbers are rotting away by the beamful and the corpses are piling up.

   • 2008, Elias Lönnrot, The Kalevala:

     He set off to get some words take some mysteries: he cut a field of reindeer open a big beamful of squirrels; from there he got many words— all of them useless.

   • 2011, Tim Pears, Landed, page 205:

     A rider on a horse approaches: a torch attached to saddle or bridle illuminates a beamful of plummeting needles of rain, as if to reveal them rather than clarify the way forward for the rider.