thimbleful
Americannoun
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thimblefuls
plural
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the amount that a thimble will hold.
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a small quantity, especially of liquid.
noun
Spelling
See -ful.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of thimbleful
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Microbiologists began by isolating the microbial DNA in a thimbleful of soil to see what genes and species were in the sample.
From Science Magazine ● Jul. 12, 2021
Yes, there are people whose skills in planning combine with their access to resources and they manage waste down to a monthly thimbleful.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 19, 2019
These 10 wines represent a mere thimbleful of the rosés produced in the United States each year.
From New York Times ● Jul. 5, 2018
“This is a thimbleful out of a river of shame,” Osler said, “but it’s important that that focus is gradually being revealed.”
From Washington Post ● Dec. 17, 2014
More than a thimbleful, less than a cup.
From "Dry" by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman
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He left so few paintings – not more than 120 over a 40-year career – it is rightly said that he measured out his genius in thimblefuls.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 3, 2016
The idea was to re-create the kind of old-fashioned Milanese bar that might have served the distillery workers pasticceria and thimblefuls of espresso in the 1950s.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 5, 2015
Watch five minutes of a remote-control back loader shifting two thimblefuls of earth across a hole, and all that will change.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 2, 2015
Max-Planck-Institute EVA For their DNA study, researchers used thimblefuls of powdered bone extracted from these three Neanderthal bones found in the Vindija cave.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 7, 2010
The old guard’s natural radiation sources, the thimblefuls of radium and clumps of radium-beryllium they used to make the discoveries that transformed physics—nuclear disintegration, the neutron, and artificial radioactivity—had had their day.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
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