playgroundful

English

Etymology

From playground +‎ -ful.

Noun

playgroundful (plural not attested)

1. Enough to fill a playground.
   • 1950 April 23, “PTA Gifts Worth Thousands—Even Electric Eraser Cleaner: In Just One City School, Contributions Were Valued At Over $2,500 In 4 Years—But Intangibles Are Important Too”, in Sunday News, volume 27, number 33, Lancaster, Pa., section “Can’t Be Counted”, page 19:

     In addition to a long list of radio-phonographs and records, projector, piano, folding chairs for meetings, bulletin boards, a cello for the orchestra, typewriter and mimeograph, card catalogues and files, 17 trees for the grounds, bookshelves and books, there’s a whole playgroundful of sports equipment donated.

   • 1957 September 1, “6-Year Olds Preview ‘First Day Of School’”, in The Arizona Daily Star, volume 116, number 244, Tucson, Ariz., section B, page one:

     The new experience involves a lot of preparation … new clothes, a physical examination, learning how to get to school plus the adjustment to taking or buying one’s lunch, getting to know a teacher and playing new games with a playgroundful of children.

   • 1964 October 25, “Proceeds for Tuition: Ashley Turns Out For Novel Auction”, in The State Journal, Lansing—East Lansing, Mich., page A-1:

     By late afternoon a whole playground-ful of items had been auctioned off, including four collie pups, an old piano, toys, baby cribs, farm machinery, straw, beans, and even an armload of “Hula Hoops.”

   • 1966 January 14, Grace Madley, “Posh accents in fur”, in The Philadelphia Inquirer, volume 274, number 14, Triangle Publications, Inc., section “Juvenile Fabrics, Too”, page 9:

     There’s a spark of humor in a playgroundful of boys and girls flying kites.

   • 1969 August 25, Robin Thornber, “Very like a whale”, in The Guardian, page 6:

     But undoubtedly a whale beached incongruously on a clearance site in a mildly tough area of Liverpool, between boozer and bookie, tatty pawnshop and towering council flats. […] There was a good playgroundful of kids, lapping round the long-suffering leviathan in cursing currents as the word spread that you could get in- or on, or under it at the other end, losing interest as they were shooed off and finding fresh attractions in sliding down the roof of an adjacent school or breaking whisky bottles in front of passing cars.

   • 1973, Virginia Quarterly Review‎^[1], page 429:

     Outside a blue jay’s ragged discussion with himself answered what sounded like a distant playgroundful of children merrily slaughtering each other at recess.

   • 1973 April 1, “Turn-Style”, in Decatur Sunday Herald and Review‎^[2], volume 43, number 13, Decatur, Ill.:

     Extra big 6-legged gym set keeps a home playground-ful of happy children.

   • 1976, Julie Hayden, The Lists of the Past‎^[3], New York, N.Y.: The Viking Press, →ISBN, page 128:

     The people who moved out of the house next door bequeathed him a playgroundful of equipment—slide, swings, seesaw, jungle gym—for the grandchildren.

   • 1980, Eliot Wagner, My America!, New York, N.Y.: Kenan Press, →ISBN, page 392:

     Sparrows merrily chirped in the trees that shaded a playgroundful of tots and mothers and she crossed to the hospital not to have her baby but lose it.

   • 1984 November, Mike Madigan, “‘The Big One’ Softens Its Bite—a Bit”, in Ski, →ISSN, page 231:

     There may not be a playgroundful of fresh-cut beginner trails this winter, or a snazzy new aluminum-roofed condo complex in the village.

   • 1992, Miles Morland, The Man Who Broke Out of the Bank … and Went for a Walk in France, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 147:

     We stopped to watch the lycée children being herded into class, a playgroundful of shining morning faces, and then took an old stone bridge across the Arrats, back into the beginning of another feather of the Fan.

   • 1993 July 15, “Good Sports”, in Rugeley Mercury, volume 128, number 648, page 21:

     TAKE a schoolful of sporty children, a playgroundful of parents and fieldful of bounces - castle and trampoline variety. Add a barbecue, a bar and a large pinch of PTA power and family fun flavouring, and you have the recipe for Thomas Barnes Summer Sports Tournament.

   • 1993 December 3, Martin Schram, “We need to wage an all-out, all-American war on crime”, in The Herald-Palladium, Benton Harbor — St. Joseph, Mich., page 8A:

     Remember [George H. W.] Bush’s response to the clamor to do something about assault weapons after a lunatic with a Chinese-made AK-47 massacred a playgroundful of children in Stockton, Calif.

   • 1996, Suzannah Dunn, Venus Flaring‎^[4], Flamingo, →ISBN, page 107:

     We faced a playgroundful of children.

   • 2004, Jen Safrey, A Perfect Pair, Silhouette Books, →ISBN, page 215:

     When she called them back to class, the kids burst through the classroom door, carrying a playgroundful of energy with them.

   • 2005, Michelle Herman, “Hope against Hope”, in The Middle of Everything: Memoirs of Motherhood, Lincoln, Neb., London: University of Nebraska Press, →ISBN, page 211:

     When Grace was a baby, I would sit tensely in a roomful or a playgroundful of other women and their children, listening to the low rumble of debate, the judgments passed, the disapproval masquerading as a question or even as admiration ([…]), and the uneasiness and fear and even panic I could hear just underneath what everybody said ([…]), every mother implicitly criticizing whatever anybody else was doing if it were even the least bit different from what she was doing – since doing things differently was an implicit criticism of her way.

   • 2006 December 18, “It’s no joke at Santa boot camp: Our trainee Father Christmas, Sam Leith, faces the ultimate test – a playground of five-year-olds”, in The Daily Telegraph, number 47,132, page 16:

     Santa found himself with a heaving playgroundful of adoring tots dangling in clusters off his legs.