container

plural containers

1. Someone who contains; something that contains.
   1. An item in which objects, materials or data can be stored or transported.
   2. transportA very large, typically metal, box used for transporting goods.

      The specifiers of the Freightliner network had the foresight to base the rail journey on carrying ISO containers which are 8ft wide and originally 8ft tall (although now increased to a height of 9ft 6ins), with a variety of lengths.

      2020 May 20, Industry Insider, “An online boost for freight”, in Rail, page 68

      2 more examples

      Will container development merely bring about a substitution for the body of the covered wagon? Probably not, in his view, but he believes that the size and tonnage of the container are likely to increase pari passu with the lifting capacity of handling appliances.

      1963 April, “Beyond the Channel: France: Freight stock of the future”, in Modern Railways, page 269

      On a damp and blustery morning, three-metre swells crash into the cracked hull of the MSC Baltic III, which was grounded on a pinnacle of rock on the west coast of Newfoundland earlier this year. The wind carries whiffs of rotten egg. Salvage crews in hard hats and neon yellow jackets inch along in a temporary cable car suspended high over the churning Atlantic. In a province with a long and dangerous maritime history, the Baltic's grounding in the roiling shallows of Cedar Cove last February is a story Newfoundlanders retell with incredulity. The cargo ship, en route to Corner Brook from Montreal, lost power in the early morning of Feb. 15 during a ferocious blizzard. The ship, packed with hundreds of containers of lumber, textiles, plastic beads, legumes and car parts, plus 1,600 metric tonnes of fuel, careered into the only safe harbour along a coast of towering cliffs. All 20 crew members were airlifted off the ship in a harrowing rescue by the Royal Canadian Air Force. Over the following months, salvage crews offloaded most of the 470 containers and siphoned out the fuel, which had hardened into an asphalt-like substance, in a multistage operation that involved heating it for days. At risk were local wildlife — migratory birds and the capelin and lobster that local fish harvesters rely on for their livelihoods. The goal of the work is to ready the ship for eventual dismantling and removal from the shoreline.

      2025 December 29, Lindsay Jones, “A Newfoundland winter brings new risks to Coast Guard's biggest-ever operation. Crews at mercy of the elements as they work to clean up grounded ship”, in The Globe and Mail, page A1

      Synonyms: cargo container, shipping container

   3. broadlySomeone who holds people in their seats or in a (reasonably) calm state.
   4. file formatcomputingA file format that can hold various types of data.

      As the MP4 container can store audio, video, or both, the M4A naming and file extension is used to hint that this MP4 container holds solely audio information.

      2011, Cory Altheide, Harlan Carvey, Digital Forensics with Open Source Tools, page 187

      Synonyms: container format

   5. object-oriented programmingcomputingAn abstract data type whose instances are collections of other objects.

      This advantage is the primary incentive for using a list container, rather than a vector or a deque.

      2015, Ivor Horton, Using the C++ Standard Template Libraries, Apress, →ISBN, page 64

   6. computingAny user interface component that can hold further (child) components.

      Flex automatically creates a TabBar container at the top of the TabNavigator container, with a tab corresponding to each child container. Each tab can have its own label and icon.

      2007, Rich Tretola, Simon Barber, Renaun Erickson, Professional Adobe Flex 2, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 62

   7. Java programming languagecomputingA web container.
   8. cloud computingcomputingA bundle consisting of operating system, application code and dependencies to be run sandboxed inside a virtualized environment; (by extension) the environment itself.

      The application components all run in containers. They are isolated like VMs but lightweight and efficient like PaaS services.

      2020, Elton Stoneman, chapter 1, in Learn Docker in a Month of Lunches, →ISBN

      1 more example

      Generally, when people think of serverless computing, they tend to think of applications with back-ends that run on third-party services, also described as code running on ephemeral containers.

      2017, Maddie Stigler, Beginning Serverless Computing, Apress, →ISBN, page 1

      Synonyms: software container

   9. crosswordingA type of cryptic device where one word is inserted into another.

      Container word clues are actually three clues in one.

      2013 July 1, John P.Stewart, Don't Let Cryptic Crossword Clues Fool You: Intellectual Stimulation and Mental Alertness Guaranteed, Booktango, →ISBN

      2 more examples

      As with all varieties of cryptic clues, the container device can be used in conjunction with other devices, especially in more complex cryptic crosswords.

      2012 June 13, Denise Sutherland, Solving Cryptic Crosswords For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 48

      We have already mentioned 'in' having multiple uses; 'round' or 'around' might be a container indicator or a reversal indicator; 'without' might be a container indicator or a deletion indicator, and so on.

      2020 August 20, Telegraph Media Group Ltd, The Telegraph: How To Solve a Cryptic Crossword: Mastering cryptic crosswords made easy, Hachette UK, →ISBN, page 23