Citations:churchful

Noun: "as many as a church will hold"

 * 1856 — Anonymous, Claude de Vesci: A Tale, Volume II, Bell and Daldy (1856), page 218:
 * All this was carried from the Hand-inHand to wife and children in every Thordale home, so that such a churchful was never known as flocked in on the Sunday afternoon — the whole parish was there, determined to have "a good seeght of t' wonderful young Lord."
 * 1893 — Gilbert Parker, Mrs. Falchion, Chapter XVIII:
 * See how eloquent your mountains make me!--I think that would make one hard and cruel; and one would need the prayers of a churchful of good women, even as good--as you."
 * 1893 — Robert Louis Stevenson, Catriona, Chapter XVI:
 * The text was in Romans 5th and 13th - the minister a skilled hand; and the whole of that able churchful - from Argyle, and my Lords Elchies and Kilkerran, down to the halbertmen that came in their attendance - was sunk with gathered brows in a profound critical attention.
 * 1956 — Grace Metalious, Peyton Place, Northern University Press (1999), ISBN 1555534007, page 304:
 * There was GInny's husband, lying on the floor and raving the same as he always did when he was dead drunk, while a whole churchful of sober and apparently sane people listened as if he were telling them where to find gold.
 * 2010 — Andrea Boeshaar, Uncertain Heart, Realms (2010), ISBN 9781616380236, page 242:
 * "You get to yell at a whole churchful of people every Sunday."