Other forms: fuller, fullest
Full means there is no room left inside. A cup filled to the brim, a bus where the driver waves you on to the next one, a suitcase you have to kneel on to close.
Full also means you have eaten enough — 'no cake for me, I'm full.' It stretches to mean complete or maximum: your full name, the full price, a full hour, a full moon, driving at full speed. With OF it means containing a lot of something, and that something need not be solid: a room full of smoke, a life full of surprises. The adverb is fully, and it means completely — fully booked, fully aware. British English adds full up, which covers both a packed bus and a stuffed stomach.
1adjectivefullHolding as much as it can, with no space left.~2%
“The bin was full, so I left the bag beside it.”
synonyms: filled, packed
2adjectiveeatenHaving eaten as much as you want.~2%
“Thanks, but I couldn't manage another bite — I'm full.”
3adjectivecompleteComplete, with nothing left out.~77%
“Please write your full name and address at the top of the form.”
synonyms: complete, entire
4adjectivemaximumAt the highest possible level or amount.~17%
“The washing machine was running at full speed.”
5adjectivecontainingContaining a large amount of something, used with 'of'.~2%
“The letter was full of spelling mistakes.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 36 sentences found in the wild and placed 33 of them on a sense (3 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Full has barely moved in a thousand years: Old English full, before that Proto-Germanic *fullaz, and further back the Proto-Indo-European *pl̥h₁nós, which already meant full. The same ancient root took a different road into Latin as plēnus, which is where English got plenty. Dutch vol, German voll and Swedish full are the same word wearing local clothes.
Proto-Indo-European
*pleh₁-
Proto-Indo-European
*pl̥h₁nós — full
Proto-Germanic
*fullaz — full
Proto-West Germanic
*full
Old English
full — full
Middle English
ful
English, today
full
From Middle English ful, from Old English full (“full”), from Proto-West Germanic full, from Proto-Germanic fullaz (“full”), from Proto-Indo-European pl̥h₁nós (“full”). Germanic cognates include West Frisian fol, Low German vull, Dutch vol, German voll, Danish fuld, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish full. Proto-Indo-European cognates include English plenty (via Latin, compare plēnus), Welsh llawn, Russian по́лный, Lithuanian pilnas, Persian پر, Sanskrit पूर्ण. See also fele and fou (whence the English doublet a doublet of fou). For the "drunk, intoxicated" sense, compare also full and other Scandinavian languages.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA