parcel

noun

1. A package wrapped, as for shipment or transport.

   “I saw a brown paper parcel on my doorstep.”

   “At twilight in the summer[…]the mice come out. They[…]eat the luncheon crumbs. Mr. Checkly, for instance, always brought his dinner in a paper parcel in his coat-tail pocket, and ate it when so disposed, sprinkling crumbs lavishly[…]on the floor.”

   ““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. […]””

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.

   “[…] this youthful parcel / Of noble bachelors stand at my bestowing,”

   “"Come, now," said the hill-man, "let us hear who else is to be at the christening?" "Ah," said the boy, "we are to have a great parcel of strangers and great people."”

   “[…] instead of sitting (as she ought to have done) by her good father and mother, she must needs run up into the gallery, and sit with a parcel of giddy creatures of her own age […]”

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 […]”

   “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.”

   “I don't think we are sitting pretty / So far away from our fair city / But I love you more than any parcel of earth.”

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.

   “Their woes are parcell’d, mine are general.”

   “Thoſe ghoſtly Kings would parcel out my pow’r, / And all the fatneſs of my Land devour;”

   “Hindostan was then parcelled out into twelve grand divisions, called soobahs, to each of which a viceroy was assigned, by the title of Soobahdar, corruptly written Soobah by European writers; for, soobah signifies province: many of these soobahs were in extent equal to large European kingdoms.”

   “Then the great Hall was wholly broken down, / And the broad woodland parcell’d into farms;”

4. To add a parcel or item to; to itemize.

   “[…] that mine own servant should / Parcel the sum of my disgraces by / Addition of his envy!”

adv

1. (not-comparable, obsolete)Part or half; in part; partially.

   “Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet […]”

   “[…] as the worthy dame was parcel blind and more than parcel deaf, knowledge was excluded by two principal entrances […]”

   “here was one [a hut] that, summer-blanch’d, / Was parcel-bearded with the traveller’s-joy / In Autumn, parcel ivy-clad;”