spleenful
/ˈspliːnfəl/
spleenful adjective: full of spleen; spiteful.
Adjective
spleenful (comparative more spleenful, superlative most spleenful)
- Full of spleen; spiteful.
- The spleenful Pigeons never could create
A prince more proper to revenge their hate:
Indeed, more proper to revenge, than save;
A king, whom in his wrath the Almighty gave:
For all the grace the landlord had allow'd,
But made the Buzzard and the Pigeons proud;
Gave time to fix their friends, and to...17th C., John Dryden (1631-1700), “The Hind and the Panther”, in The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - His fluency was as remarkable as ever, and at first as spleenful; by-and-by his outrageous mood gave way, and, in response to some of Rainham's adroit thrusts, he condescended to stand on his defence.1893, Ernest Dowson, Arthur Moore, A Comedy of Masks
- The spleenful Pigeons never could create
Noun
spleenful
- A quantity of invective.
- Wyndham Lewis is equipped for his task with an amazing vocabulary of diatribe and derision, a spleenful of gall, and sense for the absurd — the monstrous, the Gargantuan, the preposterously incongruous— which, when disciplined, makes his best passages uproariously effective.1970, New York Times Saturday Review of Books and Art - Volume 1, page 2
- On a sleepless odyssey through the capital's nightspots, cafes, office blocks and bedroom floors, Johnny (something between a slice of John Lydon, and a dose of Mark E. Smith) vents a spleenful of bile on whomever he encounters.2002, Ali Catterall, Simon Wells, Your Face Here: British Cult Movies Since the Sixties, page 209
- More than one can take.
- But suddenly, inexplicably, I've had a spleenful of it, and I'm going for the kid.2002, The Missouri Review - Volume 25, page 163
Forms of spleenful
| comparative | more spleenful |
|---|---|
| superlative | most spleenful |
Origin of spleenful
From spleen + -ful.
Words formed from spleenful
Questions about spleenful
- What does spleenful mean?
- Spleenful means full of spleen; spiteful.
- What part of speech is spleenful?
- Spleenful can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce spleenful?
- Spleenful is pronounced /ˈspliːnfəl/.
Words near spleenful in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: spleenful (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: “spleenful.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spleenful. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.