Dictionary

sackful en · NOUN · etymology 1

Pronunciation

• (Southern-England) audio
• /ˈsæk.fʊl/

Etymology

From sack (“bag”) + -ful.

Meanings

1. The amount a sack will contain.
   • Potatoes were getting very scarce. If you got a sackful you could take them down to the cook-house and swap them for a water-bottleful of coffee. 1938 April, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter VI, in Homage to Catalonia, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC, page 77:
   • A sackful of sand won't help the soil here much, but a dump truck full would.
   • If I be not so rich, as to sowe almes by sackfulls, euen my Mite, is beyond the superfluity of wealth: and my pen, my tongue, and my life, shal (I hope) helpe some to better treasure, then the earth affoords them. c. 1623, Owen Felltham, Resolves, Divine, Morall, Politicall, London: Henry Seile, Essay 48, p. 155:
   • You live until you die, and it doesn’t matter how you go; dead’s dead. So why carry on like a sackful of sick cats just because Herb Clutter got his throat cut? 1966, Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, New York: Modern Library, published 1992, Part 3, p. 227:
2. (figuratively) A large number or amount (of something).
   • 1853, uncredited translators, German Popular Tales and Household Stories: Collected by the Brothers Grimm, New York: C.S. Francis, Volume I, 74. “The Fox and the Cat,” p. 381, […] I understand a hundred arts, and have, moreover, a sackful of cunning!
   • […] away we went home again fraught with a Sackful of news to tell our Master. 1680, Richard Head, chapter 7, in The English Rogue Continued in the Life of Meriton Latroon, London: Francis Kirkman, page 87:
   • 1986, Hanif Kureishi, “Bradford” in Granta 20, Winter, 1986, p. 163, He received sackfuls of hate mail and few letters of support.
   • Day and night the poor fellow raved, and always about that confounded orchid, the loss of which seemed to weigh upon his mind as though it were a whole sackful of unrepented crimes. 1915, H. Rider Haggard, chapter 19, in Allan and the Holy Flower, London: Longman, Green, page 349:
   • what can the Pope say more for his sackfull of traditions? 1590, Henry Barrow, A Brief Discoverie of the False Church, page 231:

Forms

Synonyms

sackload

Translations (14)

cy cydaid (the amount a sack would contain) · it saccata (the amount a sack would contain) · ga lán saic (the amount a sack would contain) · ca sacada (the amount a sack would contain) · nrf satchie (the amount a sack would contain) · fi pussillinen (the amount a sack would contain) · fi säkillinen (the amount a sack would contain) · ga lán mála (the amount a sack would contain) · it sacco (the amount a sack would contain) · nrf pouquelée (the amount a sack would contain) · pdt Sakvoll (the amount a sack would contain) · fi repullinen (the amount a sack would contain) · nrf poutchie (the amount a sack would contain) · hu zsáknyi (the amount a sack would contain)

sackful en · ADJ · etymology 2

Pronunciation

• (Southern-England) audio
• /ˈsæk.fʊl/

Etymology

From sack (verb) + -ful.

Meanings

1. (obsolete) Intent on plunder.
   • Now will I sing the sackfull troopes, Pelasgian Argos held, c. 1611, George Chapman, transl., The Iliads of Homer, London: Nathaniell Butter, Book 2, p. 30:

Forms