packet

Pluralpackets

Formspackets, packeting, packeted

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A small pack, bundle, or parcel.

   The courier delivered a packet wrapped in brown paper.

   Inside her bag were several packets of dried herbs.

   Similarparcel, package, pack, bundle, sachet

   Note

   The root sense, and the one the word's shape explains. It comes from Middle English pacquet, either borrowed from Middle French or built at home from pak plus the diminutive -et, so a packet is literally a little pack. It takes of for its contents (a packet of letters, a packet of biscuits) and also forms compounds such as crisp packet. An older, archaic use stretched it to a traveler's bag of clothes and nightwear.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A small fragment of data transmitted across a network, such as an Ethernet network.

   The router inspects every packet before forwarding it onward.

   Dropped packets can cause stuttering during a video call.

   Note

   The broad networking sense. Data crosses a network not as one unbroken stream but as small fragments sent one by one, and Ethernet is the classic medium. Everyday technical talk uses the word loosely, as in dropped packets or inspecting every packet. Narrower uses pin it to a single layer, such as the Internet Protocol unit or the transport-layer message, and context usually tells which is meant.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   The basic data unit defined by the Internet Protocol for routing information across networks.

   Each IP packet carries a header with the source and destination addresses.

   Routers read the destination field of every packet to choose a path.

   Similardatagram

   Note

   Networking uses the word here for one layer only: the unit that the Internet Protocol itself defines and routes. It is easy to blur with the Ethernet fragment, which is tied to a particular kind of network, and with a transport-layer message, which belongs to a different layer. In careful technical writing, adding the qualifier, as in IP packet, makes clear which unit is meant.

4. 4
   nouncolloquialcountable

   A large sum of money.

   Renovating the kitchen set them back a packet.

   She made quite a packet on the stock market last year.

   Similarfortune, bundle, mint, bomb, pile

   Oppositepittance

   Note

   Money talk with a fixed shape. The word nearly always comes with the indefinite article after a verb of spending or earning: it costs a packet, it sets you back a packet, someone makes a packet. The phrase stresses how much without saying how much, which is exactly its use in casual complaint or admiration.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A message transmitted across a network using a transport-layer protocol such as TCP or UDP.

   The transport layer numbers each packet so the receiver can reassemble them in order.

   A lost packet triggers a retransmission request from the receiving host.

   Similarsegment, datagram

   Note

   One layer up, the word names the messages programs exchange over a transport protocol such as TCP. Application and game protocols lean on it heavily. Minecraft's server protocol, for instance, has server and clients communicate in packets, each a sequence of bytes sent over the TCP connection. Here the packet is the program's own unit of conversation, carrying port numbers and control fields along with its data.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A vessel for carrying dispatches, mail, passengers, and goods on fixed days of sailing; a mail boat.

   The transatlantic packet sailed on schedule despite the rough weather.

   Letters from the colonies arrived aboard the weekly packet.

   Note

   A ship defined by its timetable rather than its build. The word first meant a government vessel carrying dispatches and mail, then widened to any boat that sailed on fixed days with mail, passengers and goods. It also works as a modifier, as in packet boat, packet ship and a packet port. In Emerson Hough's The Purchase Price (1910), a smoking river packet waits at the end of the dock.

7. 7
   verbtransitive

   To make something up into a packet or bundle.

   They packet the dried flowers carefully so the petals don't crumble.

   The cooperative packets its harvest into one-kilogram bundles.

   Similarpackage, pack, bundle, wrap

8. 8
   nounslangcountable

   A man's genitals, especially as outlined by tight clothing.

   The dancer's costume drew every eye to his packet.

   He tucked his packet into the snug briefs before the photo shoot.

   Similarpackage

   Note

   Slang that works just like package: the word for something wrapped is turned on what tight clothing outlines. Paul Mendez's Rainbow Milk (2020) has a sleeping man unable to close his legs because of the size of his packet. Keep it to casual, knowing talk. In a neutral sentence the word will be read as a parcel, and in a suggestive one it will not.

9. 9
   nounSouth Africacountable

   A bag made of plastic.

   He carried the groceries home in a single packet.

   The wind blew an empty packet across the parking lot.

   Similarbag

   Note

   In South African English the everyday plastic bag is a packet. The use is ordinary enough for newspaper headlines, as in Wendy Knowler's 2012 piece "Plastic packets: who bags the profits?" Readers from elsewhere should not mistake it for the small parcel. A South African packet is the thin bag the shopping goes home in, not the thing wrapped inside it.

10. 10
    nouncountable

    A specimen envelope holding small dried plants or plant parts, often attached to a larger sheet.

    Loose seeds were stored in a packet attached to the herbarium sheet.

    The curator opened each packet to examine the fragile specimens.

    Note

    A herbarium term. The packet rides on a mounted sheet and keeps small or loose material with the specimen it belongs to. Botanists know its limits well. Rudolf M. Schuster warned in 1992 that a herbarium packet gives only a small fraction of the data sound taxonomic conclusions need, because fresh material still reflects the site the plant grew in.

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