Chock-full means completely filled, packed so tightly that nothing more could possibly fit inside. When your backpack is chock-full of books, you can barely zip it closed. When a theater is chock-full of people, every seat is taken and there’s standing room only.

The word means crammed, stuffed, or jam-packed to the absolute limit. A basket might be full of apples, but a basket chock-full of apples has them piled high and spilling over the edges. A day might be full of activities, but a day chock-full of activities means you’re rushing from one thing to the next without a moment to spare.

You might hear someone say a book is chock-full of adventure, meaning it’s absolutely packed with exciting moments from beginning to end. Or that a garden is chock-full of vegetables, with plants growing in every available space. The phrase captures that satisfying sense of abundance, when something contains as much as it possibly can hold.