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Shovelful   Listen
noun
Shovelful  n.  (pl. shovelfuls)  As much as a shovel will hold; enough to fill a shovel.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shovelful" Quotes from Famous Books



... Welsh mortals, it had become a habit, when planting a young tree, to throw the last shovelful of earth over the left shoulder. This was for good luck. The farmer was afraid to break such a good custom, as he thought it ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis

... in its disorder. The one lighted burner of the gaselier, turned too high, hissed up into a long tongue of flame. The fire smoked feebly under a newly administered shovelful of 'slack', and a heap of ashes and cinders littered the grate. A pair of walking boots, caked in dry mud, lay on the hearth-rug just where they had been thrown off. On the mantelpiece, amidst a dozen other ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,

... also because I am raging at having done what I did with your two hundred thousand crowns; but could I then imagine that I should find again, as a farmer, the son of a king who handled his diamonds by the shovelful? Ah, it is no use to philosophize here; but to find Father Griffen again if ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... piled in a large basket, scraps tossed into the fire, sewing materials gathered together and put out of sight, the rugs laid smoothly, the window-shades drawn. Anne "brushed up" the floor, pushed chairs against the wall, put a shovelful of coals on the fire, and finally took her rocker at the hearth, and sat with Virginia in her arms, and Diego beside her, while two silver bowls of bread and milk were finished to ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris

... slaughtering first the cock, then the mole, and lastly the dog, taking care that every drop of blood should fall on the appointed spot. But when he had called "Igrek!" at the conclusion of the ceremony, a fiery-red cock rose suddenly under the juniper, flapped his wings, crowed and flew away. A shovelful of silver was then cast up at the youth's feet. Next a fiery-red cat with long golden claws rose from under the juniper, mewed, and darted away, when the earth opened and threw up another shovelful of silver. Next appeared a ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... were quick enough you might catch a glimpse of a distant black figure stooping and disappearing in one of those ditches, and reappearing the next moment with a motion which you would know meant the heaving out of a shovelful of snow. But you needed to be quick, for that black figure would not linger, but would soon drop that shovel and scud for the house, thrashing itself with its arms to warm them. Yes, it was too venomously cold for snow-shovelers or anybody ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... other, in consequence, as Wolfert concluded, of not going to work at the proper time and with the proper ceremonials. The last attempt had been made by Cobus Quackenbos, who dug for a whole night, and met with incredible difficulty, for as fast as he threw one shovelful of earth out of the hole, two were thrown in by invisible hands. He succeeded so far, however, as to uncover an iron chest, when there was a terrible roaring, ramping, and raging of uncouth figures about the ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... quantity of hops picked, and records it in a book to the credit of each working family. Then the green hops are carted off in "pokes" or sacks to the "oast-houses" to be dried. For this purpose, anthracite coal and charcoal are used in the kiln, a shovelful or two of sulphur being added to the fire when the hops are put on. The process of drying takes eleven hours, and afterwards the dried hops are packed in pockets which, when full, weigh about a hundredweight and a half each, the packing being effected by hydraulic pressure. They are then ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... fire, in burning, turns into gases, which are rank poison—carbonic acid, for one; sulphurous acid, for another. Hold your nose over a shovelful of hot cinders if you doubt the fact. The gases produced by the fire expand; they increase in bulk without getting heavier, so much so that they become lighter in proportion than the air, and then they rise, and this rising of hot air is what is ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... work, but every time he threw a shovelful out of the window, two shovelfuls came flying in to take its place. At last, tired and discouraged, he sat ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher

... pounded, bending rhythmically to the work, lifting each heaping shovelful with her strong young arms, tossing it to the side, digging in again, and under. An occasional neighbor passed by, or a friend, and she waved at them, gayly, and tossed back their badinage. "Merry Christmas!" she called, again and again, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... of the best woman," says a German writer, "there glows a shovelful, at least, of infernal embers; in that of the worst, there is a little ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... the machinery. The process is simply this:—A shovelful of earth is taken from the heap and washed in the basins (a shovelful to ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear

... as I descended the shaft to the bed-rock, and piled up billets of wood, and kindled them, throwing out the muck, drifting with the streak, sending up nuggets to the surface, and dirt which often averaged ten dollars to the pan, I said to myself, 'Every shovelful you dig out, and every fire you light, and every billet you stack, is helping Spurling to ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... conversation, during which Molly, by a hint from her mistress, put down the kettle, an act which, on being observed by Dunphy, made his keen old eye sparkle with the expectation of what it suggested. Shovelful after shovelful passed from dish to plate, until a very relaxed action on the part of each ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... quick breaths come and go as I worked, and with each shovelful of soil I turned Cumshaw craned his head a little ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh

... the engineer has thrown another shovelful of coal into the furnace, and I wish to see the effect it will produce. He has opened his valve a little, but he ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... for the franchise. It will then be time enough to discuss it. In the meantime the N. C. O. plans a public dedicatory ceremony at the first breaking of ground, and I would be greatly honoured, Mr. Mayor, if you would consent to turn the first shovelful of earth and deliver the address of ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... keeping up a roaring fire. For this purpose the remnants of an old broken-down cart, of which the axle was anciently greasy, had been fetched from the winter-store, and the wood and peats together, with a shovelful of coal to give the composition a little body, had made a glorious glow. But the heat had hardly yet begun to affect sensibly the general atmosphere of the place. It was a large room, the same size ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... it, like jewels into a rag-sack, or into TEN rag-sacks all in one; with far more authenticity than you could expect in such case. Let us call it, for brevity, Helden-Geschichte, in future references.] to omit the Hotham Despatches, we obtained the following shovelful of authentic particulars, perhaps not quite ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... had been with him on many a gay excursion; there were those who had experienced his tenderness and loving-kindness. Old man Johnson, from over the river, who had walked eight painful miles, laid the first shovelful of earth into the grave. Patton McRae helped to cover his life-long friend. The negroes from the farm sobbed audibly as they worked. A tramp came into the graveyard from the road and asked whose buryin' it was. They told him, and ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton

... it would be but temporary. What profits a man to gain the world, if he lose his peace of mind? "What! I unhappy among all this kingly paraphernalia, and with a queen wife?" he would ask himself, going down into the basement to replenish the furnace. With every shovelful of coal he would curse himself for ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... a business proposition; would it be right to do anything else? Here's a copper property that you could sell to-morrow for a hundred million dollars gold, and the apex claim is jumped. The whole title to the mine is tied up right there—they can claim every shovelful you mine, and your mill and your smelter to boot. What kind of a business man would I be if I left this to McVicker and Ord? No, I'm going to send to San Francisco, and Denver, and Butte, and retain every mining attorney ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge



Words linked to "Shovelful" :   spadeful, shovel



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