Word.ws English Dictionary

holeful

holeful noun: as much as fills a hole.

Noun

holeful (plural holefuls or holesful)

  1. As much as fills a hole.
    • At this very instant while she was recalling a lifetime of work, Mr. Greenleaf was loitering in the woods and Mrs. Greenleaf was probably flat on the ground, asleep over her holeful of clippings.1956, Flannery O'Connor, “Greenleaf”, in The Kenyon Review, volume 18, number 3, page 408
    • When Red and the professor got out to slide the heavy disk back into place they discovered a holeful of angry, baleful eyes looking up at them.1966, E. L. Doctorow, Big as Life, page 21

Adjective

holeful (comparative more holeful, superlative most holeful)

  1. Filled with holes; holey.
    • When at last Mr. Alderman Flapp emerged, swathed in a comforter and in a flowing self-consciousness of equity, Mr. Flipp approached on the tips of his holeful boots, and whispered, "I am the dirty crossing-man; are you the dirty crossing-boy?" — and in another moment they were locked in each...1925, Eustace Clare Grenville Murray, Strange Tales, page 18
    • Much of this squary-holeful architecture, seems to me clumsy and dwarfy, full of the defects of Egyptian buildings but wanting their grandeur.1989, Vidya Dehejia, Edward Lear, Allen Staley, Impossible Picturesqueness: Edward Lear's Indian Watercolours, 1873-1875, pages 66–67

Examples of holeful in a sentence

  • One of the women was down washing clothes in that holeful of water.1988, Muriel Marshall, Red Hole in Time, page 240:
  • Serene Pugwash Pond was a three acre holeful of water, having been formed in loose till by a chunk of ice left in the wake of receding glaciers.2014, S. Dorman, Maine Metaphor: The Green and Blue House, →ISBN:
  • Flipp approached on the tips of his holeful boots, and whispered, "I am the dirty crossing-man; are you the dirty crossing-boy?" — and in another moment they were locked in each others' arms.1925, Eustace Clare Grenville Murray, Strange Tales, page 18:
  • A body covered by a holeful rag Shoots out an odour more unwelcome Than the one of cattle dung grund1992, Writers Advisory Services International - Volume 3, Issue 3, page 81:

Forms of holeful

Noun
pluralholefuls
pluralholesful
Adjective
comparativemore holeful
superlativemost holeful

Origin of holeful

From hole + -ful.

Questions about holeful

What does holeful mean?
Holeful means as much as fills a hole.
How do you use holeful in a sentence?
One of the women was down washing clothes in that holeful of water.
What part of speech is holeful?
Holeful can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of holeful?
The plural of holeful is holefuls.

Words near holeful in the dictionary

  1. Holeceks
  2. Holechek
  3. holed
  4. holed out
  5. holed up
  6. holeful
  7. holefuls
  8. holei
  9. holeless
  10. holelessness
  11. holelike

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: holeful (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “holeful.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/holeful. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.