packaging

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The materials used to wrap, box, or otherwise contain a product for storage, sale, or shipping.

   Eco-friendly packaging reduces the amount of plastic that ends up in landfills.

   The new packaging features a resealable lid for convenience.

   Similarwrapping, packing

   Note

   A mass noun in most of its uses. A product comes in too much packaging, not too many packagings. The plural packagings does exist, but it is the exception. The word sits comfortably after another noun naming what is wrapped, as in food packaging, or the material it is made from, as in plastic packaging. It answers the question "how much?" rather than "how many?"

   Shoppers are asking supermarkets to use less packaging on fruit.

   The company switched from plastic to paper packaging last year.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The process or act of placing items into containers for storage or transport.

   The packaging of fresh produce must be done fast to keep it cool.

   Automated systems have sped up the packaging of online orders.

   Similarpacking, wrapping

   Oppositeunpacking

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The way a person or product is presented and promoted to shape how the public sees it.

   The candidate's packaging emphasized youth and energy over policy detail.

   Slick packaging convinced investors the startup was further along than it really was.

   Similarpresentation, branding, image, marketing, spin

   Note

   The wrapper becomes a metaphor here. Image-making does for a candidate, a band or an artist what the box and film do for a product. The word often carries a hint that presentation outruns substance. Rob Schmieder, writing in Gay Community News in 1982, praises a painter as "resistant to the relentless packaging" of the artistic pigeonholes in vogue in the States.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The commercial sector that manufactures the materials used to wrap, box, and protect products.

   After graduating, he found a job in packaging at a major manufacturer.

   Packaging has grown rapidly alongside the boom in online shopping.

5. 5
   verb

   Present participle of package.

   The factory is packaging thousands of units every hour.

   They spent the morning packaging fragile glassware for export.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty, as a participle (the factory is packaging) and as a gerund. As a gerund it still behaves like a verb and takes a direct object, as in packaging glassware. By contrast, the noun for the act takes of: the packaging of produce. The verb behind it also reaches into publishing and broadcasting, where packaging a book or series means preparing it, from research to production, for sale.

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