packet

1. (nautical) 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).Examples: "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."; "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."

2. (botany) A specimen envelope containing small, dried plants or containing parts of plants when attached to a larger sheet.Examples: "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[…]."

3. (networking) A small fragment of data as transmitted on some types of network, notably Ethernet networks (Wikipedia).

4. (networking) A protocol data unit of the Internet Protocol.

5. (networking) A message sent over a transport layer protocol.Examples: "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."

6. (South Africa) A plastic bag.Examples: "2012 August 6, Wendy Knowler, Plastic packets: who bags the profits?"South-Africa