prisonful
English edit
Etymology edit
Noun edit
prisonful (plural prisonfuls or prisonsful)
- Enough to fill a prison.
- 1868 January 5, Humphry Sandwith, ““Unspoken Words.””, in The Daily News, number 6,764, London, published 7 January 1868, page 5:
- When we shall have, as suggested by “A Briton,” thus once for all degraded ourselves to the level of savages, we shall undoubtedly have on our hands a furious and open Irish insurrection, with an American war, and then possibly certain savage deeds in India, perpetrated while suppressing a real insurrection, might rise up against us, and teach us that even that affair might have been managed by fair fighting alone without suffocating prisonsful of sepoys, and murdering peasantry on the line of march.
- 1872 July 19, “Coal and the Civil Service”, in The Pall Mall Budget: Being a Weekly Collection of Articles Printed in the Pall Mall Gazette from Day to Day: With a Summary of News, volume VIII, London, page 9 [609]:
- They remind us that we carry the load of national debt like a feather-weight; keep armies of paupers in plenty and prisonfuls of prisoners in luxury, and can count upon an indefinite elasticity of revenue.
- 1977 March 5, Greg Clark, “Traveling singer has inside message”, in Record Searchlight, volume 125, number 305, Redding, Calif., page 6:
- There have been prisonsful of similar dramas for Mrs. Peterson during her tours.