An armful is the amount of something you can carry in your arms at one time. When you gather up an armful of firewood from the woodpile, you're holding as many logs as your arms can wrap around. When your little sister asks you to bring her an armful of stuffed animals, she wants you to scoop up as many as you can carry in one trip.

The word gives us a rough but useful way to measure things that don't come in neat packages or containers. Someone might carry an armful of blankets up the stairs, grab an armful of leaves during fall cleanup, or return from the library with an armful of books. The exact amount varies depending on what you're carrying and how big your arms are, but that's part of what makes the word handy: it describes a practical, human-sized quantity.

Notice that we use armful for things we physically hold against our body, not just things we carry with our hands. You'd have an armful of laundry but a handful of coins. The word reminds us that sometimes the best measurements aren't precise numbers but simply “as much as you can manage.”