# container

Pronunciation: US say "kuhn-TAY-nur" /kənˈteɪnɚ/; UK say "kuhn-TAY-nuh" /kənˈteɪnə/

## Noun

1. An item used to store or transport objects, materials, or data.
   - Simple: A thing you use to hold or carry objects, materials, or other items.
   - _The warehouse sorts goods into labeled containers before shipping._
   - _Pour the flour into an airtight container to keep it fresh._
2. A very large box, usually made of metal, used for shipping goods over long distances.
   - Simple: A huge metal box used to carry goods on ships, trains, or trucks.
   - _Dockworkers stacked thousands of containers along the harbor._
   - _A single container can hold the contents of a small house._
3. A person who contains something, or a thing that contains something.
   - Simple: A person or thing that holds something inside or keeps it in place.
   - _The skull serves as a rigid container for the brain._
   - _Philosophers once imagined the body as a container for the soul._
4. A bundle of application code, its dependencies, and parts of an operating system, packaged to run isolated within a virtualized environment.
   - Simple: A package that holds a program and everything it needs to run safely on its own.
   - _Each microservice runs in its own container, isolated from the others._
   - _Spinning up a new container takes only a few seconds._
5. A data type in programming whose instances hold collections of other objects.
   - Simple: In programming, an object that holds a group of other objects together.
   - _The standard library provides several container types, such as vectors and maps._
   - _Each container exposes methods to add and remove elements._
6. A user interface component that can hold other (child) components inside it.
   - Simple: In a screen layout, a part that can hold other parts inside it.
   - _The layout places each form field inside a single container._
   - _Designers nest one container within another to build complex screens._
7. A file format able to hold various types of data within a single file.
   - Simple: A type of file that can hold different kinds of data together, like video and sound.
   - _The Matroska container can hold video, multiple audio tracks, and subtitles together._
   - _Choosing the right container keeps all your media streams in sync._
8. A part of a Java server that runs and manages servlets, handling their lifecycle, requests, and responses.
   - Simple: In Java, the part of a server that runs and manages small web programs.
   - _Tomcat is the most widely used container for Java servlets._
   - _The container creates a new thread for each incoming request._
9. A cryptic crossword device in which one word is inserted inside another to form the answer.
   - Simple: In cryptic crosswords, a clue trick where one word is placed inside another.
   - _A well-built container hides the inserted word so the surface reading stays smooth._
   - _Recognizing the container let her place the hidden letters inside the outer word._
10. A person who keeps people in their seats or in a reasonably calm state.
   - Simple: A person who keeps a crowd seated or fairly calm.
   - _Every good teacher is a container, keeping thirty restless children calm and seated._
   - _As the storm warning spread, the captain became the container for a frightened cabin._

## Origin

From Middle English conteyner, equivalent to 'contain' plus the suffix '-er'.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/container (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).