cradleful

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   A number of babies that lies in a cradle.

   • It seems she churns the butter with one foot and rocks a cradleful of twins with the other; with her hands she knits socks for her husband; on her knee rests a book from which she is improving her mind.
   • ... women, and its hourly increasing cribfuls and cradlefuls of babies ... far below them, unfolding, developing, growing under their guardianship like some phenomenal paper flower unfolding in a gigantic bowl of light.
   • Not an easy object of affection, she had thought, not the sort of woman who would be content with a few rooms, an absentee mariner husband, and a cradleful of screaming babies.
2. 2

   A quantity of mined earth that is washed at one time in a cradle.

3. 3

   A quantity of something that is newly born or created.

   • ...so we shall justify the argument of Mr. Dooley, who said, in reviewing "The Jungle," that he could not see how it was any less a crime to cut off a young tomato in its prime, or to murder a whole cradleful of baby peas in the pod!
   • The yellow warbler may adorn your garden with its nest and place a cradleful of fuzzy nestlings at your elbow.
   • They set monopoly rates; they regulated ever-changing financial markets; they nurtured a whole cradleful of delicate industries, from ocean shipping to nuclear powered electric generation.

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