packets

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of packet.

   The pharmacist handed over two packets of pills with printed instructions.

   Network engineers traced the missing data across thousands of lost packets.

   Note

   A regular -s plural that carries every sense of packet with it: little parcels, the mail boats that once sailed on fixed days, botanists' specimen envelopes, and the units of data a network sends. The same spelling also serves as the verb's present-tense form. After a number or adjective (two packets, lost packets) it is the noun. After a singular subject (the machine packets the candy) it is the verb.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of packet.

   Note

   The present-tense form that needs a singular subject and, almost always, a direct object. Its transitive uses cover bundling goods, sending something by dispatch vessel, and, on the Internet, flooding a target with data packets in a denial-of-service attack. Only the old shipping sense, to ply with a packet boat, stands without an object: a vessel that packets between two ports carries nothing named after the verb.

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