Word.ws English Dictionary

shrink-wrap

shrink-wrap noun: a plastic film that is used to protect an item and which during application contracts so it tightly enclose it.

Noun

shrink-wrap (countable and uncountable, plural shrink-wraps)

  1. A plastic film that is used to protect an item and which during application contracts so it tightly enclose it.
    • Please order another five rolls of shrink-wrap from the supply house.
  2. The wrapping around an item that has been shrink-wrapped.
    • Please don't damage the shrink-wrap when you are boxing up the items for shipment.

Verb

shrink-wrap (third-person singular simple present shrink-wraps, present participle shrink-wrapping, simple past and past participle shrink-wrapped)

  1. To apply shrink-wrap to (an item).
    • We spent all day shrink-wrapping boxes and now my feet hurt.
  2. (derogatory) To reconstruct an extinct creature known from its fossils by depicting it with minimal soft tissue, yielding a thinner and less accurate representation of the creature.
    • Such shrink-wrapped models gave generations of schoolchildren mental images of dinosaurs that are probably much uglier and scrawnier than the creatures were in reality.

Forms of shrink-wrap

Noun
pluralshrink-wraps
Verb
third-person singular presentshrink-wraps
present participleshrink-wrapping
past participleshrink-wrapped
pastshrink-wrapped

Origin of shrink-wrap

From shrink + wrap.

Words formed from shrink-wrap

Phrases with shrink-wrap

Questions about shrink-wrap

What does shrink-wrap mean?
Shrink-wrap means a plastic film that is used to protect an item and which during application contracts so it tightly enclose it.
What part of speech is shrink-wrap?
Shrink-wrap can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of shrink-wrap?
The plural of shrink-wrap is shrink-wraps.

Words near shrink-wrap in the dictionary

  1. shrink rates
  2. shrink ray
  3. shrink rays
  4. shrink up
  5. shrink-swell
  6. shrink-wrap
  7. shrink-wrap license
  8. shrink-wrap licenses
  9. shrink-wrapped
  10. shrink-wrapping
  11. shrink-wraps

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shrink-wrap (page history and authors). 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.

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