cloudful

Etymology

From Middle English cloudeful, equivalent to cloud + -ful.

Why this word is great

CLOUDFUL — Adjective. Abounding with clouds, clouded, cloudy.

From Middle English *cloudeful*, marrying *cloud* (a visible mass of condensed vapor) with *-ful* (a suffix brimming with abundance). Unlike *clear*, which conjures skies scraped bare of obstruction, or *sunny*, which beams with untroubled radiance, *cloudful* thrums with the brooding weight of cumulus, the restless drift of cirrus, the woolen hush of stratus. A sky pregnant with storm, a teacup’s steam curling like a private weather system, the slow erasure of a mirror fogged by breath—each holds the quiet truth that opacity, too, has its seasons.

adj

  1. Abounding with clouds, clouded, cloudy.“From the waterless land and flora, in the thundery landscape, the drying pitch of dayshine, the shine that was parching […] has actually there contracted suddenly vast masses of thunder clouds, into the thick thunder rainfall, from the cloudful sky.”
  2. Dark, dimmed; troubled, turbid.“His words, accordingly, proceeding from a mind "in a dark, hot, cloudful state," were "metallic, meteoric, ball-like."”

noun

  1. The amount contained in a cloud.“One might suppose himself angling in Lake Avernus, with a cloudful of hobgoblins on each side of him!”