wrapping

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The material placed around an object to cover or protect it.

   The gift's glossy wrapping was almost too pretty to remove.

   Bubble film makes excellent wrapping for fragile dishes during a move.

   Similarpackaging, casing

   Note

   The word goes back to Middle English wrappinge, built from wrap plus -ing. The plural suggests layer upon layer of covering: the Folklore Society's Publications of 1918 describe fairy doctors who kept stone arrowheads, used to cure cattle, in numerous wrappings. Casing and packaging are near synonyms.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of wrap.

   Wrapping the leftovers carefully, she placed them in the fridge.

   Wrapping presents is her least favorite holiday chore.

   Note

   The -ing form doubles the final p: wrap becomes wrapping. As a gerund it still takes a direct object (wrapping presents), and that object tells it apart from the noun for the material. It carries every sense of the verb, including the film set's. A crew wrapping a shoot has finished filming, not packing anything up.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The breaking of a block of text into lines so it fits within the available width of a display area.

   The editor's wrapping kept each line within the column, breaking the text automatically at the margin.

   Disabling wrapping forced readers to scroll sideways through the long lines of code.

   Note

   Here the word names a process rather than a material: the line breaks are recalculated whenever the text changes or the window is resized. It often travels in a compound (word wrapping, line wrapping, text wrapping), and word wrap names the setting you switch on or off in an editor. A line break is the single point where one line ends; wrapping is the process that places those points.

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