Bowlsful/ bowlfuls

when I started secondary school we had an antiquated English teacher whose mantra was 'all right is not all right unless it is spelled as two words'. Nowadays everyone spells it as 'alright' without a second thought. I think that bowlsful has made much the same progression. I'm sure that it would originally have been two words, 'bowls full' and we've just got into the way of running them together. Having turned them into one word people are doing what seems to be the rule with a plural noun and putting the 's' at the end of the word.

My spellcheck objects to 'bowlsful', BTW. It offers me 'bowlfuls'

P.S I think that 'a lot' is going the same way., alot

I’d have just said 3 bowls of soup. 3 teaspoonsful sounds better than 3 teaspoonfuls -but is that just because it’s what I’m used to saying?

oh no, not the eating of bowls now

I would use bowlfuls both in speech and writing and bowls full in writing, but never bowlsful.

I am not sure whether there is a grammatical rule though.

Really, I would prefer Maw's option, He ate three bowls of soup, as after all no-one is likely to have offered anyone a bowl that was three- quarters empty.

Bring pedantic, if you were to write that he ate "three bowls full of soup", you would actually be saying that he ate the bowl as well as the soup, wouldn't you?

The more I have thought about it, the more convinced I am that the bowlful, as a unit of measurement/quantity should be pluralized like any other ordinary noun - with the s on the end.

Grammatically, it is completely different from things like sisters-in-law

Definitely bowlsful, although it does look odd after all the times it's been written on here!

Like others, I'd get round it by saying 'bowls full' or just 'bowls'.

After all, it's the bowls that are full, so if you can say 'bowls' alone and the sentence still make sense, then 'full' is the word that describes 'bowls'. Then we get on to 'hot cup of tea' or 'cup of hot tea'...

It is a strange word JaneJudge and the more I look at it on this thread the stranger it seems.

I keep seeing bowel now Kalu think I'll say dish of soup in future

you'd think it would be boal like coal or foal

and fowl is not like bowl

JaneJudge

I would just say he had three bowls of soup

bowl is a funny word isn't it?

It is. And, if the correct pronunciation isn’t used, bowl and bowel would sound the same. 😀

I too would just say a bowl of or three bowls of regardless of the quantity. We’re they full, three full bowls of.

(Don't get me started on 'different to' 👿)

Me too!!

eazybee

The cookery mistress at school always insisted on spoonsful; don't remember any discussion about bowls.

I am sure there is a difference between a spoon “full of sugar” and a spoonful
I think it is that the latter is a measure while the former describes the spoon
As I said before, when in doubt, leave it out
A bowl of soup, a teaspoon/tablespoon etc of sugar, a cup of tea !

I presume that 'bowlful' follows the same rule as 'cupful' in the plural:

cupful
noun [ C ]
UK /ˈkʌp.fʊl/ US /ˈkʌp.fʊl/
plural cupfuls or US also cupsful

dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/cupful

Callistemon21

I'd change my proof reader.
Proofreader.

I think I would, too

It's bowlsful.

I suppose a purist would say that it's ''bowls full' I think that's how I would insist it's written.

As for 'on a weekend', 'on' is a preposition, it tells you about the placement of something. How on earth would you be able to get 'on' a weekend? I realise it's a dialect phrase, very common here in the NE, but it's incorrect.

(Don't get me started on 'different to' 👿)

Do professional proofreaders have to pass a grammar test? This one would fail for me...

I would just say he had three bowls of soup

bowl is a funny word isn't it?

I'd change my proof reader.
Proofreader.

Bowls full definitely. The other way to me would be the American way. (I cannot settle to read any American book - am I allowed to say that?).

If the fulness of the bowls needs to be stressed one could say three brimming bowls of soup.

I think I’d just say 3 bowls of soup. Or ‘3 full bowls’ would avoid the dilemma.

Eliminate the problem by saying "bowls of..."

I'd say bowlsful is right 'technically' but bowlfuls is 'right' in that it's probably what most people say if they don't say bowls of.

It's a "bowls full" from me!

The cookery mistress at school always insisted on spoonsful; don't remember any discussion about bowls.

But I admit that I've regularly said 'bowlsful / 'cupsful' etc. in everyday speech, always slightly unsure of which was correct but have never stopped to think about it properly until now. 😁

A 'bowlful', written as one word, is a singular noun.

Thinking about it, I don't think it makes sense to pluralize a singular (unhyphenated) noun by inserting an 's' in the middle, so i would make the plural 'bowlfuls', adding the 's' on the end in exactly the same way as I would with any other quantity, such as ounces, gallons etc.

Alternatively, I might go with 'three bowls full', or 'three full bowls'.