packet

noun

1. A small pack or package; a little bundle or parcel

   “Don't throw the crisp packet on the floor!”

   “a packet of letters”

   “a packet of biscuits”

   “(archaic) a travel bag containing clothing, nightwear and other accessories.”

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.”

   “The wooden jetty on the East Pier had become worm-eaten and was demolished, but the Admiralty lent an old hulk to serve as a rough-and-ready packet facility.”

   “Fishguard Harbour, constructed some 60 years ago by the G.W.R., became the packet port for G.W.R. services to Waterford and Rosslare - the latter port itself was a new venture partly under G.W.R. auspices - and to Cork.”

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 you see is what you get[…].”

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.”

7. (South-Africa)A plastic bag.

   “2012 August 6, Wendy Knowler, Plastic packets: who bags the profits?”

8. (slang)Synonym of package (“male genitalia”).

   “A sleeping, silver-haired man, probably about fifty, couldn’t close his legs because of the size of his packet.”

9. (informal)A large amount of money.

   “It'll cost a packet to fix this.”

verb

1. (transitive)To make up into a packet or bundle.
2. (transitive)To send in a packet or dispatch vessel.

   “[H]er husband / VVas packetted to France, to ſtudy courtſhip, / Under forſooth a colour of employment, / Employment, yea of honour.”

3. (intransitive)To ply with a packet or dispatch boat.
4. (Internet, transitive)To subject to a denial-of-service attack in which a large number of data packets are sent.

   “2007, Committee on Improving Cybersecurity Research in the United States, Toward a Safer and More Secure Cyberspace Typically, one hacker will annoy another; the offended party replies by launching a denial-of-service attack against the offender. These attacks—known as packeting—tend to be of limited duration […]”