Dictionary

cradleful en · NOUN

Etymology

From cradle + -ful.

Meanings

1. A number of babies that lies in a cradle.
   • It seems she churns the butter with one foot and rocks a cradleful of twins with the other; with her hands she knits socks for her husband; on her knee rests a book from which she is improving her mind. 1930, John Robertson Dunlap, Arthur Van Vlissingen, John Michael Carmody, Factory and Industrial Management - Volume 79, page 279:
   • ... women, and its hourly increasing cribfuls and cradlefuls of babies ... far below them, unfolding, developing, growing under their guardianship like some phenomenal paper flower unfolding in a gigantic bowl of light. 1943, Agnes Rothery, The Ports of British Columbia, page 20:
   • Not an easy object of affection, she had thought, not the sort of woman who would be content with a few rooms, an absentee mariner husband, and a cradleful of screaming babies. 2015, Judith Lennox, The Glittering Strand:
2. A quantity of mined earth that is washed at one time in a cradle.
   • Another party, again, turned up two large diamonds immediately after their arrival, and in their first cradleful of earth ; but although that is over a mouth ago, their hearts have not been gladdened with the sight of a precious stone since ; (Can we date this quote?), Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Belgravia - Volume 13, page 226:
   • What, haven't you heard? it is your friend Jem! he has got a slice of luck, bought a hole of a stranger, saw the stuff glitter, so offered him thirty pounds he was green and snapped at it; and if Jem didn't wash four ounces out the first cradleful I'm a Dutchman. 1856, Charles Reade, It Is Never Too Late to Mend:
   • For four days he worked hard at the cradle, although there was not the least occasion for it, since the proportion of gold in the dirt was so large that every cradleful of stuff yielded several pounds weight of the metal, and it could only be the work of a few hours when his father and brother returned. 1861, Eneas Sweetland Dallas, Once a Week - Volume 5, page 465:
3. A quantity of something that is newly born or created.
   • They set monopoly rates; they regulated ever-changing financial markets; they nurtured a whole cradleful of delicate industries, from ocean shipping to nuclear powered electric generation. 1986, Business Week - Issues 2954-2966, page 272:
   • ...so we shall justify the argument of Mr. Dooley, who said, in reviewing "The Jungle," that he could not see how it was any less a crime to cut off a young tomato in its prime, or to murder a whole cradleful of baby peas in the pod! 1934, Upton Sinclair, The Book of Life, page 146:
   • The yellow warbler may adorn your garden with its nest and place a cradleful of fuzzy nestlings at your elbow. 1943, Nature Magazine, page 190:

Forms