paddockful

paddockful

English

Etymology

paddock +‎ -ful

Noun

paddockful (plural paddockfuls or paddocksful)

1. As much as a paddock (field of grassland) will hold.
   • 1872, anonymous, “Jingling Geordie” in All the Year Round, Christmas 1872, p. 19,

     “I hear this mare of yours is a clipper; but I shall see what metal she has in her before an hour’s over.”

     “I tell you the truth, man. It is hard to part with her. My girl, Lizzie, is fond of her, and she is fond of Lizzie, and I allow I’d sooner you’d take all the paddockful than her.”

   • 1896, Louis Becke, “At a Kava-Drinking” in The Ebbing of the Tide: South Sea Stories, Philadelphia: Lippincott, p. 67,

     […] that fellow (the chief), his two brothers, and about a paddockful of young Samoan bucks haven’t slept at all for this two weeks.

   • 1970, Patrick White, The Vivisector, New York: Avon, 1980, Chapter 4, p. 168,

     I went down at sunrise and forked out their ensilage to a paddockful of sturdy young Angus bulls I am proud to think I bred.

   • 1992, Elvin Hatch, “The Criterion of Farming Ability”, in Respectable Lives: Social Standing in Rural New Zealand, University of California Press, published 1993, →ISBN, page 125:

     Every year he cultivates several paddocksful of swedes, which in mid to late winter are uprooted; the sheep are then allowed to forage.