Envelope
noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A paper or cardboard wrapper used to enclose small, flat items, especially letters, for mailing.
"Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet."
- 2 any wrapper or covering wordnet
- 3 Something that envelops; a wrapping.
- 4 a flat (usually rectangular) container for a letter, thin package, etc. wordnet
- 5 A bag containing the lifting gas of a balloon or airship; fabric that encloses the gas-bags of an airship.
"They have no internal or external support structure, being simply a fabric bag (or envelope) filled with a lighter than air gas. Inside the envelope are one or more "ballonets", or smaller bags, which help maintain the envelope's shape."
Show 12 more definitions
- 6 the bag containing the gas in a balloon wordnet
- 7 A mathematical curve, surface, or higher-dimensional object that is the tangent to a given family of lines, curves, surfaces, or higher-dimensional objects.
- 8 the maximum operating capability of a system (especially an aircraft) wordnet
- 9 A curve that bounds another curve or set of curves, as the modulation envelope of an amplitude-modulated carrier wave in electronics.
- 10 a natural covering (as by a fluid) wordnet
- 11 The shape of a sound, which may be controlled by a synthesizer or sampler.
- 12 a curve that is tangent to each of a family of curves wordnet
- 13 The information used for routing a message that is transmitted with the message but not part of its contents.
- 14 An enclosing structure or cover, such as a membrane; a space between two membranes
- 15 The set of limitations within which a technological system can perform safely and effectively.
"push the envelope"
- 16 The nebulous covering of the head or nucleus of a comet; a coma.
- 17 An earthwork in the form of a single parapet or a small rampart, sometimes raised in the ditch and sometimes beyond it.
"make a blind all along the bottom of the ditch of the Envelope"
- 1 To put (something) in an envelope. rare, transitive
"Arthur Armytage drew the precious document from his bureau; and without trusting himself to a re-perusal, enveloped and re-enveloped—sealed and resealed it;—mounted his horse, and rode off to Greta Castle."
- 2 Archaic form of envelop. alt-of, archaic
"Again, if the plane of the impressed couple intersects the mean plane between N and C, it will envelope the cone whose focals are ON, ON′, and whose internal axis is therefore OA."
Example
More examples"It might be a bit big but this envelope will do just fine. It's better to be too big than too small."
Etymology
PIE word *h₁én From French enveloppe. The engineering sense is derived from flight envelope. The verb is from the noun.
See envelop.