packet

• pacquet (obsolete)

From Middle English pacquet; either from Middle French pacquet, or formed independently from pak and -et.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpakɪt/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈpæ.kɪt/

packet (plural packets)

1. A small pack or package; a little bundle or parcel

   Don't throw the crisp packet on the floor!

   a packet of letters

   a packet of crisps

   a packet of biscuits

2. (nautical) Originally, a vessel employed by government to convey dispatches or mails; hence, a vessel employed in conveying dispatches, mails, passengers, and goods, and having fixed days of sailing; a mail boat. Packet boat, ship, vessel (Wikipedia).
   • 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, OCLC 639762314, page 0025:

     With just the turn of a shoulder she indicated the water front, where, at the end of the dock on which they stood, lay the good ship, Mount Vernon, river packet, the black smoke already pouring from her stacks.

3. (botany) A specimen envelope containing small, dried plants or containing parts of plants when attached to a larger sheet.
   • 1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page vii:

     With fresh material, taxonomic conclusions are leavened by recognition that the material examined reflects the site it occupied; a herbarium packet gives one only a small fraction of the data desirable for sound conclusions. Herbarium material does not, indeed, allow one to extrapolate safely: what you see is what you get […].

4. (networking) A small fragment of data as transmitted on some types of network, notably Ethernet networks (Wikipedia).
5. (South Africa) A plastic bag.
   • 2012 August 6, Wendy Knowler, Plastic packets: who bags the profits?
6. (colloquial) A manbulge.
7. (informal) A large amount of money.

   It'll cost a packet to fix this.

packet (third-person singular simple present packets, present participle packeting, simple past and past participle packeted)

1. (transitive) To make up into a packet or bundle.
2. (transitive) To send in a packet or dispatch vessel.
   • Ford

     Her husband was packeted to France.

3. (intransitive) To ply with a packet or dispatch boat.
4. (transitive, Internet) To subject to a denial-of-service attack in which a large number of data packets are sent.
   • 2007, Committee on Improving Cybersecurity Research in the United States, ‎Toward a Safer and More Secure Cyberspace

     Typically, one hacker will annoy another; the offended party replies by launching a denial-of-service attack against the offender. These attacks—known as packeting—tend to be of limited duration […]

• datagram
• packetlike
• packet radio
• packet switching, packet-switching

• packet in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

• Ptacek, peck at

• packt

packet

1. Imperative plural of packen

packet m (plural packets)

1. (networking) packet (small fragment of data)

packet

1. definite singular of pack