parcel

What it means

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

   I saw a brown paper parcel on my doorstep.

   2 more examples

   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.

   1892, Walter Besant, chapter II, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC

   “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. […]”

   1904–1905, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], “The Lisson Grove Mystery”, in The Case of Miss Elliott, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, published 1905, →OCLC; republished as popular edition, London: Greening & Co., 1909, OCLC 11192831, quoted in The Case of Miss Elliott (ebook no. 2000141h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg of Australia, February 2020

   Synonyms: package

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).

In a sentence

I saw a brown paper parcel on my doorstep.

Where it comes from

1. Latinparticula“particle”
2. Late Latinparticella
3. Old Frenchparcelle“a small piece or part, a parcel, a particle”
4. Middle Englishparcel
5. Englishparcel

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.