coatful

English

Etymology

coat +‎ -ful

Noun

coatful (plural coatfuls or coatsful)

1. The amount that a coat can hold.
   • 1981, Michael Jackson, Jessica Jackson, Bruce Jackson, Your father's not coming home any more, page 53:

     And here we walk in the house with two coatfuls and armfuls of these bulbs.

   • 2013, James Rollins, Rebecca Cantrell, Innocent Blood, →ISBN:

     Instead of using the coat to batter the threat away, he used its length and bulk like a huge net. He cast it out, scooping coatfuls of the fluttering horde out of the air.

2. A quantity that is contained within a coat.
   • 1930, Life - Volume 96, page 8:

     A coatful of wind is called an admiral.

   • 1970 January 19, George Whittington, “Under Eyes of Police: Burglars, Shoplifters Have Hard Time Over Weekend”, in The Clarion-Ledger, volume CXXX, number 249, Jackson, Miss., page 1:

     Two Negro women were being held after a patrolman on downtown duty watched them unload coatsful of items into a parked Cadillac.

   • 1997, Attila József -, Winter Night: Selected Poems of Attila József, page 64:

     On the outskirts of town, in streetlight like wet straw flung down, off to the side on the corner, a shivering coatful of woes: a man, hunkered down like a pile of dirt, but winter still steps on his toes

   • 2010, Jay Cassell, The Best Hunting Stories Ever Told, →ISBN, page 192:

     A few moments like this could make the day a lot more glorious than a coatful of birds ever could.

   • 2015, Clarence E. Mulford, Tex: A Hopalong Cassidy Novel, →ISBN, page 267:

     Within easy reach of his right hand lay a coatful of rocks culled from the road-bed, no mean weapons against figures silhouetted by the lamp-lighted windows of the buildings facing the right-of-way; and close to them were half a dozen dynamite cartridges, their wicked black fuses capped and inserted.

   • 2017, Adam Croft, Only the Truth:

     A girl who thinks nothing of smuggling a coatful of drugs across two national borders whilst escaping a murder scene with the prime suspect.

   • 2018, Nicholas Carter, Harvest of Swords, →ISBN:

     Drowning in the harbour with a coatful of coin, hah!

3. A quantity that sits on a coat.
   • 1977, Charles Veley, Catching up, page 149:

     And when Franz Liszt sat down at the piano, sporting shoulder-length hair and a coatful of glittering medals, the ladies threw their jewels onto the stage, battled over his gloves and even his cigar butts, and of course swooned.

   • 1987, Laima Dingwall, Porcupines, →ISBN, page 23:

     With this coatful of painful weapons, it is not surprising that a porcupine has few enemies.

   • 1987, Punch - Volume 293, Issues 7662-7669, page xxviii:

     Besides, how is the Oxford ethos going to cope with Business Studies? It is well-known that even the spikiest scientist, the acned misanthrope with a coatful of ballpoint pens, gets softened and blurred in his first term on an Oxford High Table.

   • 2006, Paul Mandelbaum, Adriane on the Edge, →ISBN, page 241:

     The dog with the lame paw emerged now from the river and after limping over to Adriane, shook off a coatful of Ganges water and dropped his stick in front of her.