fulth

English

Alternative forms

• fouth

Etymology

From Middle English fulth, fulthe; equivalent to full +‎ -th. Compare Old English fylleþ (“fullness”, in compounds) and Middle High German vüllede (“fullness”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fʊlθ/
• Rhymes: -ʊlθ

Noun

fulth (uncountable)

1. (UK dialectal, Northern England, Scotland) Fullness; abundance; plenty.
   • 1910, Thomas Hardy, A Singer Asleep:

     —It was as though a garland of red roses / Had fallen about the hood of some smug nun / When irresponsibly dropped as from the sun, / In fulth of numbers freaked with musical closes, / Upon Victoria's formal middle time / His leaves of rhythm and rhyme.

   • 1911, John Payne, transl., The Poetical Works of Heinrich Heine: Now First Completely Rendered Into English Verse, in Accordance with the Original Forms, volume 3, page 134:

     Yes, these yonder are the vessels, / Which Don Juan Ponce de Leon / Hath with gear and crews outfitted / For the seeking of the island / Where, in lovesome fulth, the Water / Of Rejuvenescence welleth.

   • 1952, Yorkshire Dialect Society, Summer Bulletin, page 18:

     The man who looked after the clew (clough) spoke of the louth and fulth of the drain. (Lowness and fulness.)

2. (UK dialectal, Northern England, Scotland) Fill; sufficiency; repletion; satiety.
   • 1641, Henry Best, “Rural Economy in Yorkshire in 1641: Being the Farming and Account Books of Henry Best, of Elmswell, in the East Riding of the County of York”, in The Publications of the Surtees Society, George Andrews, published 1857, page 4 & 5:

     A lambe will fall to the grownde, or to eatinge of grasse, when it is aboute a moneth or five weekes olde; yett if it have its fulth of milke, it will forbeare the longer; and the lambes that forbeare grasse the longest, prove for the most parte, the straightest, and best quartered; and these usually that fall to grasse over soone, proove short runtish sheepe, and are of the shepheardes callede dumplinges, or grasse belly’de lambes.

   • 1853, Michael Theakston, A List of Natural Flies that are Taken by Trout, Grayling, & Smelt, in the Streams of Ripon, W. Harrison (publ.), page 62.

     When the weather is genial, at the times of hatching and coming on the water of these two flies, the trout generally take their fulth of them in preference to all others, when the natural flies only can succeed; but if rude, westling weather then prevails, it gives good imitations a chance.

   • 1853, Michael Theakston, A List of Natural Flies that are Taken by Trout, Grayling, & Smelt, in the Streams of Ripon, W. Harrison (publ.), page 73.

     THE stars of the spring are fading, but their splendour remains iu^[sic] the trout! Fat and capricious, the gilded monarch selects his fulth from the good things that surround him.

   • 1924, Yorkshire Dialect Society, Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society, page 41:

     A lamb falls to the ground, i.e., begins to eat grass instead of being suckled when about five weeks old, for then they have had their fulth of milk.

Middle English

Noun

fulth

1. Alternative form of fulthe