hedgeful

English

Etymology

From hedge +‎ -ful.

Noun

hedgeful (plural hedgefuls or hedgesful)

1. An amount held in a hedge.
   • 1891 September 5, Benj[amin] Buckman, “Some Hot Blasts for the Birds. Crude Sentiment vs. Common Sense.”, in The Rural New-Yorker, volume L, number 2171, New York, N.Y., page 639, column 1:

     One thrush or robin may mutilate a hundred bunches of grapes in a day, with one or two pecks at a bunch, and Nature “does the rest.” Count the robins by flocks and the thrushes by hedgefuls, and what one knows all soon know, and they go to the place where food is plentiful—the result can be easily computed.

   • 1917, Charles Henry Mackintosh, Gardens in Duluth: Rambles around the Summer City with Charles Erwin Roe […], Duluth, Minn.: Stewart-Mackintosh, Inc., page 15:

     Hedgesful of fragrant flowers are beautiful too, but nothing can attain the supreme beauty of these great gnarled trees, their black branches heaped high with scented snow.

   • 2016, Mary Hogan, “South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club”, in The Woman in the Photo, Waterville, Me.: Thorndike Press, Gale, →ISBN, page 152:

     The very last thing a proper lady would ever do is allow her face to get so dangerously close to a hedgeful of bristles.