envelope

Syllables: en·vel·ope/ˈɛnvə(ˌ)ləʊp//ˈɛnvə(ˌ)loʊp/

envelope noun: a paper or cardboard wrapper used to enclose small, flat items, especially letters, for mailing. Also the archaic form of envelop.

Noun

envelope (plural envelopes)

A paper or cardboard wrapper used to enclose small, flat items, especially letters, for mailing.
- Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to...2013 June 14, Jonathan Freedland, “Obama's once hip brand is now tainted”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 18
Something that envelops; a wrapping.

Synonyms:

wrapper
A bag containing the lifting gas of a balloon or airship; fabric that encloses the gas-bags of an airship.
- They have no internal or external support structure, being simply a fabric bag (or envelope) filled with a lighter than air gas. Inside the envelope are one or more "ballonets", or smaller bags, which help maintain the envelope's shape.1992, Lieutenant Colonel Donald E. Ryan, Jr, The airship's potential for intertheater and intratheater airlift, DIANE Publishing, page 46
Synonyms:

gasbag
A mathematical curve, surface, or higher-dimensional object that is the tangent to a given family of lines, curves, surfaces, or higher-dimensional objects.
A curve that bounds another curve or set of curves, as the modulation envelope of an amplitude-modulated carrier wave in electronics.
The shape of a sound, which may be controlled by a synthesizer or sampler.
The information used for routing a message that is transmitted with the message but not part of its contents.

Synonyms:

header
An enclosing structure or cover, such as a membrane; a space between two membranes
The set of limitations within which a technological system can perform safely and effectively.
- push the envelope
- Few of the lads had ever been in combat and they knew little about the critical tolerances of fighter aircraft during violent maneuvers. They knew where the outside of the envelope was, but they didn't know about the part where you reached the outside and then stretched her a little . . .1980, Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff, Bantam Books, →ISBN, page 350
The nebulous covering of the head or nucleus of a comet; a coma.
An earthwork in the form of a single parapet or a small rampart, sometimes raised in the ditch and sometimes beyond it.
- make a blind all along the bottom of the ditch of the Envelope1816, James Stanier Clarke, The Life of James the Second King of England

Verb

envelope (third-person singular simple present envelopes, present participle enveloping, simple past and past participle enveloped)

(rare, transitive) To put (something) in an envelope.
- Arthur Armytage drew the precious document from his bureau; and without trusting himself to a re-perusal, enveloped and re-enveloped—sealed and resealed it;—mounted his horse, and rode off to Greta Castle.1836, [Catherine Gore], chapter VII, in Mrs. Armytage; or, Female Domination. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], page 109
- This business of returning letters to the writers gives occupation to about sixty lady clerks in the “Return-Letter Department,” in the gallery up-stairs. To them belong the duties of reënveloping the letters in the well-known, yellow, dead-letter envelope, by which, under an act of Congress...1873 November 8, Louis Bagger, “The Dead-Letter Office”, in Appletons’ Journal, volume X, number 242, New York, N.Y., page 595, column 1

Also used as

envelope is also the archaic form of envelop.

envelope meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

envelope in Hindi

wrapper for mailing: लिफ़ाफ़ा lifāfā, लिफाफा liphāphā

envelope in Tamil

wrapper for mailing: உறை uṟai, கடித உறை kaṭita uṟai

envelope in Marathi

wrapper for mailing: लिफाफा liphāphā

envelope in Urdu

wrapper for mailing: لِفافَہ lifāfa

More languagesFewer languages

envelope in Bengali: খাম kham, লেফাফা lephapha
envelope in Telugu: కవరు kavaru
envelope in Malayalam: ലക്കോട്ട് lakkōṭṭŭ
envelope in Kannada: ಲಕೋಟೆ lakōṭe
envelope in Punjabi: ਲਿਫ਼ਾਫ਼ਾ lifāfā
envelope in Gujarati: પરબીડિયું parbīḍiyũ
envelope in Odia: ଲିଭୋପା libhopā
envelope in Sanskrit: उल्ब ulba
envelope in Assamese: খাম kham
envelope in Nepali: लिफाफा, खाम
envelope in Pashto: پاکټ pākaṭ
envelope in Tagalog: sobre, bilot
envelope in Arabic: مُغَلَّف muḡallaf, لِفَافَة lifāfa, ظرف ẓarf, غِلَاف ḡilāf
envelope in Malay: sampul surat, sampul, pembungkus, sarung
envelope in Indonesian: amplop
envelope in Thai: ซองจดหมาย sɔɔng-jòt-mǎai, ซอง sɔɔng
envelope in Vietnamese: phong bì, bao thư
envelope in Myanmar: စာအိတ် cait

Examples of envelope in a sentence

I suspect you write letters as hens lay eggs, find that Lady Hamilton finds them, envelopes them, puts them before you as official letters, and you direct them as per memorandum affixed.1857 July 3, Augustus de Morgan, “[Correspondence between Sir William Rowan Hamilton and Professor Augustus De Morgan.] From A. De Morgan...
To play his part out, he re-enveloped and pocketed it.1919, William De Morgan, chapter XX, in The Old Madhouse, Toronto, Ont.: J[oseph] M[alaby] Dent and Sons, Ltd., page 308:
Ordering the new householder to re-envelope the mail and pay another 43 cents was a stroke of genius.1993 February 25, Don Lander, “Curing Canadians of mail mania”, in The Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa, Ont., published 1 March 1993, page A8:

All 40 example sentences with envelope

Synonyms of envelope

Forms of envelope

Noun
plural	envelopes
Verb
third-person singular present	envelopes
present participle	enveloping
past participle	enveloped
past	enveloped

Plural of envelope: envelopes

Origin of envelope

PIE word *h₁én From French enveloppe. The engineering sense is derived from flight envelope. The verb is from the noun.

See envelop.

Phrases with envelope

1 more phrasesFewer phrases

pushing the edge of the envelope

Questions about envelope

What does envelope mean?: Envelope means a paper or cardboard wrapper used to enclose small, flat items, especially letters, for mailing.
What is envelope in Hindi?: Envelope in Hindi is लिफ़ाफ़ा (lifāfā), लिफाफा (liphāphā). See Envelope meaning in Hindi.
How do you use envelope in a sentence?: I suspect you write letters as hens lay eggs, find that Lady Hamilton finds them, envelopes them, puts them before you as official letters, and you direct them as per memorandum affixed.
What part of speech is envelope?: Envelope can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce envelope?: Envelope is pronounced /ˈɛnvə(ˌ)ləʊp/ (UK).
What is the plural of envelope?: The plural of envelope is envelopes.

Words near envelope in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: envelope (page history and authors); envelope (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-uk-envelope.ogg, En-us-envelope.ogg.

Cite this entry: “envelope.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/envelope. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.