1. The moon with its entire disc illuminated.
a. 1000. Boeth. Metr., xxviii. 81. Hwa is on weorulde þæt ne wundriȝe fulles monan.
1530. Palsgr., 223/2. Full moone, plaine lune.
1681. Otway, Soldier’s Fort., IV. i. ’Twas a Full-moon, and such a Moon, Sir!
1812–6. J. Smith, The Panorama of Science and Art, I. 597. As the full moon rises at sun-set, (because when any point of the ecliptic sets, the opposite point rises,) she would constantly rise within two hours of sun-set, on the parallel of London, during the week in which she was full.
1883. Ouida, Wanda, I. 58. The full moon was rising above the Glöckner range.
2. The period at which this occurs (= L. plenilunium).
a. 1300. Cursor M., 17288 + 72. Þese thre thinges a-bod our lord, or he to ded wald goo, Vre leuedy day & friday als and ful moyne als-soo.
c. 1475. Pict. Voc., in Wr.-Wülcker, 800. Hoc plenilunium, fulmone.
1563. W. Fulke, Meteors (1640), 61 b. From the new Moone, to the full, all humors do encrease; and from the full to the new Moone, decrease againe.
1676. Wiseman, Wounds, V. ix. 393. Towards the Full-moon, as he was coming home one morning, he felt his Legs faulter, and before he was got up stairs into his Chamber his Tongue failed him.
1796. H. Hunter, trans. St. Pierre’s Studies of Nature (1799), III. 34. They [tides] exhibit no sensible rise till the second or third day after the full Moon.
3. attrib.
1780. Cowper, Progr. Err., 282. The breach, though small at first, soon opening wide. In rushes folly with a full-moon tide.
1797. Southey, in J. Cottle, Remin. (1847), 211. A very brown-looking man of … full-moon cheeks.
1894. G.Meredith, Lord Ormont, I. iii. 91. Howling like full-moon dogs all through their lives.
