Packaging

How to spell packaging

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce packaging

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does packaging mean?

1. nounThe materials, such as boxes, wrappers, or containers, in which goods are presented and protected.
2. nounThe activity or process of wrapping and preparing goods for sale or shipment.

Packaging in a sentence

• The new packaging uses recycled cardboard instead of plastic.

• The packaging of the order took longer than the actual delivery.

• Customers complained that the packaging was difficult to open.

• Automated packaging reduced labour costs at the factory.

Where does packaging come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

The base word 'pack' arrived in English in the 1200s from a Low Countries trading term, related to Middle Dutch and Middle Low German 'pak', meaning a bundle of goods tied up for transport. Merchants across the North Sea wool and cloth trade used the word for a sealed parcel of wares, and English absorbed it through that commerce. The suffix '-age', borrowed from French and ultimately Latin '-aticum', was added to form 'package', a noun for a bundle and its wrapping, and later a verb meaning to wrap goods for sale. 'Packaging' is the gerund built from that verb, and it came to name both the act of wrapping and the wrapping material itself, a sense that grew especially common with the rise of mass-produced consumer goods in the twentieth century. The spelling trap lives at the join: the silent 'e' of 'package' is dropped before '-ing', so it is 'packaging', never 'packageing'.

How the word is built

• pack (bundle)
• -age (noun-forming suffix)
• -ing (gerund/noun suffix)