The biographer, especially of a literary man, need only mark the main currents of tendency, without being officious to trace out to its marshy source every runlet that has cast in its tiny pitcherful with the rest.1876, James Russell Lowell, “Milton”, in Among My Books. Second Series., Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co., →OCLC, page 255:
She followed the dry runlet to where a jutting shoulder formed a nook matted with briars.1931 February 9, William Faulkner, Sanctuary, New York, N.Y.: Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, →OCLC:
runlet
noun
Etymology From Middle English roundelet, from Old French rondelet (“roundlet”). More at roundlet.
[…]our cellarer shall have orders to deliver to thee a butt of sack, a runlet of Malvesie, and three hogsheads of ale of the first strike, yearly—If that will not quench thy thirst, thou must come to court, and become acquainted with my butler.1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, chapter X, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC, pages 266–267: