Word.ws English Dictionary

knotful

knotful adjective: full of knots; knotty.

Adjective

knotful (comparative more knotful, superlative most knotful)

  1. Full of knots; knotty.
    • Clear your coil of kinkings Into perfect plaiting, Locking loops and linkings Interpenetrating. Why should a man benighted, beduped, befooled, besotted, Call knotful knittings plighted, Not knotty but beknotted?1882, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, page 649
    • Is't more knotful or bewildered than the skein o'life itself, that a good tale tangles the better to unsnarl?2001, Lahsen Benaziza, Romancing Scheherazade: John Barth and the One thousand and one nights

Noun

knotful (plural knotfuls)

  1. A quantity that makes up a knot.
    • The lice had eaten their way through her rotting flesh, leaving a skeleton double-row of teeth, and of a once proud neck, a knotful of tendons and veins.1977, Ka-tzetnik, Sunrise over hell, page 200
    • Al was a knotful of butterflies by the time his music struck up and he had forced himself to dance out on to the stage apron.2007, Michael Freedland, Jolson: The Story of Al Jolson, page 51

Examples of knotful in a sentence

  • The leather went whistling through TJ's hands, leaving thin, twin bands of neatly polished skin, until the branch tore loose and a knotful of splintered wood jammed there, bloodying both his palms.2014, Ken Grant, The Deer Mouse:
  • He pulled a knotful of hundred-dollar bills out of his pocket and handed one to her.2016, Ashley Antoinette, Luxe Two: A La La Land Addiction:

Forms of knotful

Adjective
comparativemore knotful
superlativemost knotful
Noun
pluralknotfuls

Origin of knotful

From knot + -ful.

Words formed from knotful

Questions about knotful

What does knotful mean?
Knotful means full of knots; knotty.
How do you use knotful in a sentence?
The leather went whistling through TJ's hands, leaving thin, twin bands of neatly polished skin, until the branch tore loose and a knotful of splintered wood jammed there, bloodying both his palms.
What part of speech is knotful?
Knotful can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near knotful in the dictionary

  1. knot-horns
  2. knotberries
  3. knotberry
  4. knotchel
  5. knotenschiefer
  6. knotful
  7. knotfulness
  8. knotfuls
  9. knotgrass
  10. knotgrasses
  11. Knoth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: knotful (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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