full
/fʊl/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: 5.54 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Completely empowered, authorized or qualified (in some role); not limited.
Example Sentences
- "The jugs were full to the point of overflowing."
- "Our book gives full treatment to the subject of angling."
- "Anybody can cure a curable disease if he happens to have the right drug at hand, but the treatment of a condition for which there is no positive cure makes much greater demands on the doctor, who has to be practical pharmacologist, human being, psychiatrist, and father confessor—he has, in fact, to be a proper physician in the fullest sense of the word."
- "Virologist V. S. Kalyanaraman allegedly ordered the discarding of cultures of an AIDS-related virus isolated by French scientists. Some claim he wanted to substitute his own culture to insure fuller credit for the CDC in the event of a breakthrough."
- "Not long ago, it was difficult to produce photographs of tiny creatures with every part in focus.[…]A photo processing technique called focus stacking has changed that. Developed as a tool to electronically combine the sharpest bits of multiple digital images, focus stacking is a boon to biologists seeking full focus on a micron scale."
- "'Twas early June, the new grass was flourishing everywheres, the posies in the yard—peonies and such—in full bloom, the sun was shining, and the water of the bay was blue, with light green streaks where the shoal showed."
Etymology
From Middle English ful, from Old English full (“full”), from Proto-West Germanic *full, from Proto-Germanic *fullaz (“full”), from Proto-Indo-European *pl̥h₁nós (“full”). Germanic cognates include West Frisian fol, Low German vull, Dutch vol, German voll, Danish fuld, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish full. Proto-Indo-European cognates include English plenty (via Latin, compare plēnus), Welsh llawn, Russian по́лный (pólnyj), Lithuanian pilnas, Persian پر (por), Sanskrit पूर्ण (pūrṇá). See also fele and Scots fou (whence the English doublet fou (“drunk”)). For the "drunk, intoxicated" sense, compare also Swedish full and other Scandinavian languages.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Usage
Inflected Forms
fuller (comparative)
more full (comparative)
fullest (superlative)
most full (superlative)
fulls (plural)
fulls (present, singular)
fulling (participle, present)
fulled (participle, past)
fulled (past)
Derived Forms
Phrases
Frequently Paired Words
Synonyms
tuck
walk
waulk
abounding
brimful
bursting
chock-a-block
chock-full
full up
full to bursting
full to overflowing
jam full