belly-ful
(ˈbɛlɪfʊl)
[f. belly n. + -ful.]
1. As much as the belly will contain; a sufficiency of food.
| 1573 Tusser Husb. (1878) 101 No spoone meat, no bellifull, labourers thinke. 1595 Spenser Epithal. 251 Poure not by cups, but by the bellyfull. 1755 Smollett Quix. (1803) IV. 158, I never once had my belly-full, even of dry bread. 1881 J. Hawthorne Fort. Fool i. xxiii, What I need now is a bellyful of venison and acorn-bread. |
2. A sufficiency; quite as much (of anything) as one wants or cares to take. (Now rather coarse.)
| 1535 Coverdale Ezek. xxvi. 2, I haue destroyed my bely full. 1583 Golding Calv. on Deut. ci. 684 Let him thunder his belly full. 1687 A. Lovell Bergerac's Com. Hist. ii. 42 The Spectators, having had their Belly-fulls of Laughing. 1705 Hickeringill Priest-cr. ii. vi. 61 Take your Bellyfulls of Sermons. 1852 Thackeray Esmond iii. v. (1876) 357 The nation had had its bellyful of fighting. |