Package

How to spell package

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce package

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does package mean?

1. nounA wrapped or boxed bundle of one or more items prepared for storage or delivery.
2. verbTo wrap or box items together so they can be stored, sold, or sent.

Package in a sentence

• noun

  The courier left a package on the doorstep while we were out.

• verb

  The factory will package the components in protective foam before shipping.

• noun

  Each package on the shelf lists its ingredients on the back.

• verb

  They decided to package the software and the support plan as a single offer.

Where does package come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

The word grows out of 'pack', a late medieval term for a bundle of goods that English most likely picked up from Middle Dutch or Low German 'pak', meaning a parcel or bale, around the time of the wool and cloth trade with the Low Countries. To this Germanic root English added the suffix '-age', borrowed through French from Latin '-aticum', which forms nouns describing a collection, a charge, or a process; you see the same '-age' in 'baggage', 'luggage', and 'postage'. 'Package' therefore literally meant the act or result of packing, and by the 1500s and 1600s it had settled into the modern sense of a wrapped bundle ready to be carried or sent. Over the twentieth century it broadened to figurative bundles too, as in a deal, a holiday, or a set of software components offered together. The spelling trap is the soft '-age' ending pronounced 'ij', which tempts writers, but the word is simply 'pack' with the familiar '-age' added.

How the word is built

• pack (a bundle)
• -age (noun/verb suffix denoting a collection or action)