[f. BELLY sb. + -FUL.]
1. As much as the belly will contain; a sufficiency of food.
1573. Tusser, Husb. (1878), 101. No spoone meat, no bellifull, labourers thinke.
1595. Spenser, Epithal., 251. Poure not by cups, but by the bellyfull.
1755. Smollett, Quix. (1803), IV. 158. I never once had my belly-full, even of dry bread.
1881. J. Hawthorne, Fort. Fool, I. xxiii. What I need now is a bellyful of venison and acorn-bread.
2. A sufficiency; quite as much (of anything) as one wants or cares to take. (Now rather coarse.)
1535. Coverdale, Ezek. xxvi. 2. I haue destroyed my bely full.
1583. Golding, Calvin on Deut. ci. 684. Let him thunder his belly full.
1687. A. Lovell, Bergerac’s Com. Hist., II. 42. The Spectators, having had their Belly-fulls of Laughing.
1705. Hickeringill, Priest-Cr., II. vi. 61. Take your Bellyfulls of Sermons.
1852. Thackeray, Esmond, III. v. (1876), 357. The nation had had its bellyful of fighting.
