Word.ws English Dictionary

tunful

tunful noun: enough to fill a tun or cask.

Noun

tunful (plural tunfuls or tunsful)

  1. Enough to fill a tun or cask.
    • Like essence there can bee tunfuls of it. It must come by drops, no showers of it.a. 1695, George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, The Works of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, Oxford: Clarendon Press, published 1989, →ISBN, page 31
    • At the same time, every effort will be made to soften prejudice by conciliatory language, winning souls by love and not by bitterness, and remembering the words of St. Francis of Sales, “that more hearts are gained by a spoonful of honey than by tunsful of vinegar.”1887, James Britten, “The Catholic Truth Society”, in The Dublin Review, third series, volume XVII, London: Burns & Oates, Limited; Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son; New York, N.Y.: Catholic Publication...

Forms of tunful

pluraltunfuls
pluraltunsful

Origin of tunful

From Middle English tonneful (attested in the plural as tonnefullis), equivalent to tun + -ful.

Questions about tunful

What does tunful mean?
Tunful means enough to fill a tun or cask.
What part of speech is tunful?
Tunful is a noun.
What is the plural of tunful?
The plural of tunful is tunfuls.

Words near tunful in the dictionary

  1. tunesters
  2. tuneth
  3. tuneup
  4. tuneups
  5. tunewise
  6. tunful
  7. tunfuls
  8. tung
  9. Tung Chung
  10. tung oil
  11. tung oil tree

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tunful (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: “tunful.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tunful. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.