-full

Usage notes

• In current usage, only standard for forming nouns (e.g., cheerfull is now a misspelling).
• For nouns, both forms have historically been considered acceptable; e.g., Weld’s Progressive English Grammar provides both spoonful and bowl-full as examples.^[1] Now usually hyphenated (e.g., bowl-full instead of bowlfull), though both the spelling -ful and spaced compounds with full are more common (e.g., bowl full); however, the plural is rarely formed by suffixing -s instead of pluralizing the noun when spaced (e.g., bowl fulls versus bowls full), unlike with -full (bowl-fulls/bowlfulls or bowls-full/bowlsfull) and may be considered nonstandard.

Declension

Derived terms