Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The amount that a shovel can hold.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun As much as a shovel will hold or will readily lift at one time.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun As much as a shovel will hold; enough to fill a shovel.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The amount that can be moved at once with a shovel.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the quantity a shovel can hold

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • The number of self-proclaimed experts on the internet only proves the point that one should take advice with a "shovelful" of salt.

    A Shovelful of Salt, Part II: Trigger Weight and Gun Safety 2006

  • "Don't you hesitate a minute now, Mr. Knapp," said old Mrs. Hennessy heartily; "if it's no more than to put a shovelful of coal on the kitchen fire, you call 14 ring 32 and I'll be right over."

    Archive 2009-01-01 Linda 2009

  • Twenty cents, thirty cents, fifty cents, sixty cents, were the values of the gold found in the pans, and at nightfall he washed his banner pan, which gave him a dollar's worth of gold-dust from a shovelful of dirt.

    All Gold Canon 2010

  • Where the sidehill touched the water he dug up a shovelful of dirt and put it into the gold-pan.

    All Gold Canon 2010

  • "It's just booful, the way it peters out," he exulted when a shovelful of dirt contained no more than a single speck of gold.

    All Gold Canon 2010

  • "It's just booful, the way it peters out," he exulted when a shovelful of dirt contained no more than a single speck of gold.

    All Gold Cañon 2010

  • Twenty cents, thirty cents, fifty cents, sixty cents, were the values of the gold found in the pans, and at nightfall he washed his banner pan, which gave him a dollar's worth of gold-dust from a shovelful of dirt.

    All Gold Cañon 2010

  • "Don't you hesitate a minute now, Mr. Knapp," said old Mrs. Hennessy heartily; "if it's no more than to put a shovelful of coal on the kitchen fire, you call 14 ring 32 and I'll be right over."

    Are We Still Neighbors? Linda 2009

  • Where the side-hill touched the water he dug up a shovelful of dirt and put it into the gold-pan.

    All Gold Cañon 2010

  • And then one chill afternoon, sitting buttock to buttock with Fawn Greenstreet — Bodhi — on one side of him and Karuna on the other, staring through the long-nosed ascetic face of Geshe Stephen and digging inward, shovelful by shovelful, bup-bup-bah came to him.

    The Silence 2010

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