parcel

Borrowed from Old French parcelle (“a small piece or part, a parcel, a particle”), from Vulgar Latin *particella, diminutive of Latin particula (“particle”), diminutive of pars (“part, piece”). Doublet of particle.

• enPR: pärʹ-səl, IPA^(key): /ˈpɑɹsəl/
  • (General Australian) IPA^(key): [ˈpʰaː.səɫ]
  • (UK) IPA^(key): [ˈpʰɑː.səɫ]
  • (US) IPA^(key): [ˈpʰɑɹ.səɫ]

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• Rhymes: -ɑː(r)səl
• Hyphenation: par‧cel

parcel (plural parcels)

1. A package wrapped for shipment.

   I saw a brown paper parcel on my doorstep.

   • 1892, Walter Besant, chapter II, in The Ivory Gate: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], OCLC 16832619:

     At twilight in the summer […] the mice come out. They […] eat the luncheon crumbs. Mr. Checkly, for instance, always brought his dinner in a paper parcel in his coat-tail pocket, and ate it when so disposed, sprinkling crumbs lavishly […] on the floor.

   • 1905, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, chapter 2, in The Lisson Grove Mystery‎:

     “H'm !” he said, “so, so—it is a tragedy in a prologue and three acts. I am going down this afternoon to see the curtain fall for the third time on what […] will prove a good burlesque ; but it all began dramatically enough. It was last Saturday […] that two boys, playing in the little spinney just outside Wembley Park Station, came across three large parcels done up in American cloth. […] ”

2. An individual consignment of cargo for shipment, regardless of size and form.
3. A division of land bought and sold as a unit.

   I own a small parcel of land between the refinery and the fish cannery.

4. (obsolete) A group of birds.
5. An indiscriminate or indefinite number, measure, or quantity; a collection; a group.
   • c. 1602, William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well, Act II, Scene 3,

     […] this youthful parcel

     Of noble bachelors stand at my bestowing,

   • 1847, Herman Melville, Omoo, Part 2, Chapter 79,

     […] instead of sitting (as she ought to have done) by her good father and mother, she must needs run up into the gallery, and sit with a parcel of giddy creatures of her own age […]

6. A small amount of food that has been wrapped up, for example a pastry.
7. A portion of anything taken separately; a fragment of a whole; a part.

   A certain piece of land is part and parcel of another piece.

   • 1731, John Arbuthnot, An essay concerning the nature of aliments, London: J. Tonson, Chapter 4, p. 85,

     The same Experiments succeed on two Parcels of the White of an Egg […]

   • 1881, John Addington Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy, Volume 5, Part I, New York: Henry Holt, Chapter 1, p. 2,

     The parcels of the nation adopted different forms of self-government, sought divers foreign alliances.

• (package wrapped for shipment): package
• (division of land bought and sold as a unit): plot

• lot
• allotment

parcel (third-person singular simple present parcels, present participle parceling or parcelling, simple past and past participle parceled or parcelled)

1. To wrap something up into the form of a package.
2. To wrap a strip around the end of a rope.

   Worm and parcel with the lay; turn and serve the other way.

3. To divide and distribute by parts or portions; often with out or into.
   • 1592, William Shakespeare, Richard III, Act II, Scene 2,

     Their woes are parcell’d, mine are general.

   • 1667, John Dryden, The Indian Emperour, London: H. Herringman, Act I, Scene 2, p. 12,

     Those ghostly Kings would parcel out my pow’r,

     And all the fatness of my Land devour;

   • 1864, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Aylmer’s Field” in Enoch Arden, etc., London: Edward Moxon, pp. 94-95,

     Then the great Hall was wholly broken down,

     And the broad woodland parcell’d into farms;

4. To add a parcel or item to; to itemize.
   • c. 1606, William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act V, Scene 2,

     […] that mine own servant should

     Parcel the sum of my disgraces by

     Addition of his envy!

parcel (not comparable)

1. (obsolete) Part or half; in part; partially.
   • c. 1597, William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, Act II, Scene 1,

     Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet […]

   • 1826, Walter Scott, Woodstock, or The Cavalier, Chapter 4,

     […] as the worthy dame was parcel blind and more than parcel deaf, knowledge was excluded by two principal entrances […]

   • 1864, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Aylmer’s Field” in Enoch Arden, etc., London: Edward Moxon, p. 59,

     here was one [a hut] that, summer-blanch’d,

     Was parcel-bearded with the traveller’s-joy

     In Autumn, parcel ivy-clad;

• parcel in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• parcel in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

• carpel, craple, placer

parcel m (plural parcéis)

1. a shoal, a sandbank

• vau, vado, baixo, baixio, esparcel, restinga, sirte