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thimbleful

American  
[thim-buhl-fool] / ˈθɪm bəlˌfʊl /

noun

thimblefuls plural
  1. the amount that a thimble will hold.

  2. a small quantity, especially of liquid.


thimbleful British  
/ ˈθɪmbəlˌfʊl /

noun

  1. a very small amount, esp of a liquid

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Spelling

See -ful.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

Etymology

Origin of thimbleful

First recorded in 1600–10; thimble + -ful

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:

I remember throwing mosquito dunks into storm drains and desperately draining every thimbleful of standing water, as well as having to douse myself in repellent just to go outside and pick up the paper.

From Washington Post Jul. 30, 2021

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

But somehow the clever engineers at Inmarsat managed to squeeze one more drop from the thimbleful of data contained in those pings.

From Slate Mar. 26, 2014

He handed me a tiny measure, a thimbleful.

From "The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate" by Jacqueline Kelly

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

Chitrigupta patted both of them on the head, and handed them two small thimblefuls of a bright orange liquid.

From "Aru Shah and the End of Time" by Roshani Chokshi

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