packets

Noun

packet (plural packets)

1. A small pack or package; a little bundle or parcel
   • Don't throw the crisp packet on the floor!
2. 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).
   • 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.1910, Emerson Hough, “A Lady in Company”, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
3. A specimen envelope containing small, dried plants or containing parts of plants when attached to a larger sheet.
   • 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...1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page vii
4. A small fragment of data as transmitted on some types of network, notably Ethernet networks (Wikipedia).
5. A protocol data unit of the Internet Protocol.
6. A message sent over a transport layer protocol.
   • The Minecraft server accepts connections from TCP clients and communicates with them using packets. A packet is a sequence of bytes sent over the TCP connection.2024 September 28 (last accessed), “Protocol”, in wiki.vg, archived from the original on 26 Sep 2024, Definitions

See all 13 meanings of packet