streamful

English

Etymology 1

stream +‎ -ful

Adjective

streamful (comparative more streamful, superlative most streamful)

1. (poetic) Abounding in streams, or in water.
   • 1595, The Legend of Piers Gaveston:

     Thus like a ship, despoiled of her sails, Shov'd by the wind against the streamful tide, This way the one, that way the other hales, Now tow'rds this shore, and now tow'rds that doth ride,

   • 1612, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion:

     And if at first he fail, his second summersaut He instantly assays; and from his nimble ring, Still yerking, never leaves, until himself he fling Above the streamful top of the surrounded heap.

   • 1919, The Cambridge Magazine - Volume 9, page 372:

     ... Now in the dimpled streamful ghyll, and now aloft Where leaden high rigg roads leap to a livid sky, Sour and solitary, royally will I.

   • 1956, Robert Alexander, Stewart Macalister, Lebor gabála Érenn: The book of the taking of Ireland:

     Loiguire the wealthy spent a space of four powerful years, before the coming of Patrick of the Pens, it was a streamful time for noble Ireland.

   • 1984, John B. Keane, Man of the triple name, page 8:

     In the latter, most precious, most sacred and most streamful of spots, the storied Ivy Bridge spans the Glaishe Riabhach along whose leafy banks I made my first fumbling attempts at writing.

Etymology 2

stream +‎ -ful

Noun

streamful (plural streamfuls)

1. Enough to fill or make up a stream.
   • 1958, Gleason H. Ledyard, And to the Eskimos, page 21:

     Our house was hot for him (not for us) , and his sweat glands would produce perspiration by the streamful.

   • 1982, Thomas Berger, Vital parts: a novel, page 164:

     Suddenly they were among many heads of hair, most of them below Reinhart's chin so that he seemed to be wading neck-deep in a streamful of swimming beaver.

   • 1986, The Literary Half-yearly - Volumes 27-29:

     A streamful of sterile slime is before you and an arid plain behind you.

   • 2001, Walter Moers, The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear, page 229:

     There was water, certainly, a whole streamful of it, but all of fifty feet away.

2. A quantity that streams.
   • 1927, Samuel Ornitz, A Yankee Passional, page 345:

     Orr depended for sustenance on the streamful of smallfry created by Providence to feed the imperishably hopeful debtor. But even these waters sometimes ran sterile.

   • 1988, Ivan Illich, Barry Sanders, ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind, page 22:

     No longer is each utterance like a piece of driftwood the speaker fished from a streamful of treasures, something cast off in the beyond that had just then washed up onto the beaches of the mind.

   • 2000, Edward Locke, One scowl upon sunlight, page 6:

     I staggered on hearing Archaic Achilles babbling streamfuls of nonsense About a dainty slave and screeching like rapids and tumbling Over those invectives into his tent,

Anagrams

• masterful