parcel

Etymology

From Middle English parcel, from Old French parcelle (“a small piece or part, a parcel, a particle”), from Late Latin particella, diminutive of Latin particula (“particle”), diminutive of partem (“part, piece”). Doublet of particle.

noun

1. A package wrapped for shipment.
   I saw a brown paper parcel on my doorstep.
   “H'm !” he said, “so, so—it is a tragedy in a prologue and three acts. I am going down this afternoon to see the curtain fall for the third time on what […] will prove a good burlesque ; but it all began dramatically enough. It was last Saturday […] that two boys, playing in the little spinney just outside Wembley Park Station, came across three large parcels done up in American cloth. […]” 1905, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, chapter 2, in The Lisson Grove Mystery
2. An individual consignment of cargo for shipment, regardless of size and form.
3. An individual item appearing on an invoice or receipt (only in the phrase bill of parcels).
4. A division of land bought and sold as a unit.
   I own a small parcel of land between the refinery and the fish cannery.
5. (obsolete) A group of birds.
6. An indiscriminate or indefinite number, measure, or quantity; a collection; a group.
7. A small amount of food that has been wrapped up, for example a pastry.
8. A portion of anything taken separately; a fragment of a whole; a part.
   A certain piece of land is part and parcel of another piece.
   The same Experiments succeed on two Parcels of the White of an Egg […] 1731, John Arbuthnot, chapter 4, in An essay concerning the nature of aliments, London: J. Tonson, page 85
   1881, John Addington Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy, Volume 5, Part I, New York: Henry Holt, Chapter 1, p. 2, The parcels of the nation adopted different forms of self-government, sought divers foreign alliances.

verb

1. To wrap something up into the form of a package.
2. To wrap a strip around the end of a rope.
   Worm and parcel with the lay; turn and serve the other way.
3. To divide and distribute by parts or portions; often with off, out or into.
   Then the great Hall was wholly broken down, And the broad woodland parcell’d into farms; 1864, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Aylmer’s Field”, in Enoch Arden, etc., London: Edward Moxon, pages 94–95
4. To add a parcel or item to; to itemize.

adv

1. (obsolete) Part or half; in part; partially.