Parcelling
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 One of the long, narrow slips of canvas daubed with tar and wound about a rope like a bandage, before it is served; used also in mousing on the stays, etc.
"The wind continuing very light; all hands were sent aloft to strip off the chafing gear; and battens, parcellings, roundings, hoops, mats, and leathers, came flying from aloft, and left the rigging neat and clean, stripped of all its sea bandaging."
- 2 the act of distributing by allotting or apportioning; distribution according to a plan wordnet
- 3 A system for dividing something up.
"[…] these are posterior Divisions, fallen upon as Brandenburg (under Albert chiefly) enlarged itself, and needed new Official parcellings into departments."
- 4 The division of land into parcels.
"The parcelling of large estates into smaller agricultural units swelled the area of peasants' land by 1,759,000 acres."
- 5 The manner in which something is structured or packaged for sale, including the use of a specific size, material, color, font, etc.
"Most of the commodities have their own special parcellings, in the absence of which its market would be impeded and prices would have a tendency to become artificial."
- 1 present participle and gerund of parcel British, form-of, gerund, participle, present
Example
More examples"The wind continuing very light; all hands were sent aloft to strip off the chafing gear; and battens, parcellings, roundings, hoops, mats, and leathers, came flying from aloft, and left the rigging neat and clean, stripped of all its sea bandaging."
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.