English

packet on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Alternative forms

• pacquet (obsolete)

Noun

packet ‎(plural packets)

1. A small pack or package; a little bundle or parcel; as, 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).
   • 1915, Emerson Hough, The Purchase Price, chapterI:

     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. Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, 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?

Translations

Verb

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 […]

Translations

See also

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

References

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

German

Alternative forms

• packt

Verb

packet

1. Imperative plural of packen

Portuguese

Noun

packet m (plural packets)

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

Swedish

Noun

packet

1. definite singular of pack