parcel

noun

1. 1

   A package wrapped, as for shipment or transport.

   I saw a brown paper parcel on my doorstep.

   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.

   “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. 2

   An individual consignment of cargo for shipment, regardless of size and form.

3. 3

   An individual item appearing on an invoice or receipt (only in the phrase bill of parcels).

4. 4

   A division of land bought and sold as a unit.

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

5. 5

   obsoleteA group of birds.

6. 6

   An indiscriminate or indefinite number, measure, or quantity; a collection; a group.

   […] this youthful parcel / Of noble bachelors stand at my bestowing,

   "Come, now," said the hill-man, "let us hear who else is to be at the christening?" "Ah," said the boy, "we are to have a great parcel of strangers and great people."

   […] 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 […]

7. 7

   A small amount of food that has been wrapped up, for example a pastry.

8. 8

   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.

   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.

   I don't think we are sitting pretty / So far away from our fair city / But I love you more than any parcel of earth.

verb

1. 1

   To wrap something up into the form of a package.

2. 2

   To wrap a strip around the end of a rope.

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

3. 3

   To divide and distribute by parts or portions; often with off, out or into.

   Their woes are parcell’d, mine are general.

   Thoſe ghoſtly Kings would parcel out my pow’r, / And all the fatneſs of my Land devour;

   Hindostan was then parcelled out into twelve grand divisions, called soobahs, to each of which a viceroy was assigned, by the title of Soobahdar, corruptly written Soobah by European writers; for, soobah signifies province: many of these soobahs were in extent equal to large European kingdoms.

   Then the great Hall was wholly broken down, / And the broad woodland parcell’d into farms;

4. 4

   To add a parcel or item to; to itemize.

   […] that mine own servant should / Parcel the sum of my disgraces by / Addition of his envy!

adverb

1. 1

   obsoletePart or half; in part; partially.

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

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

   here was one [a hut] that, summer-blanch’d, / Was parcel-bearded with the traveller’s-joy / In Autumn, parcel ivy-clad;

Forms

plural

parcels

past tense

parceled, parcelled

past participle

parceled, parcelled

present participle

parceling, parcelling

third person singular

parcels