Definition of "dipperful"

He [the horse-doctor] made up a bucket of bran-mash, and said a dipperful of it every two hours, alternated with a drench with turpentine and axle-grease in it, would either knock my ailments out of men in twenty-four hours, or so interest me in other ways as to make me forget they were on the premises. […] I took up the Christian Science book and read half of it, then took a dipperful of drench and read the other half.

1899 October, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter III, in Christian Science […], New York, N.Y., London: Harper & Brothers, published February 1907, book I, page 28

Earmarks—those undebated dipperfuls of taxpayer-financed contracts that tripled under the Republicans—will undoubtedly return in the new budget.

2007 February 3, “A rare bill in Congress”, in The New York Times‎, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company