envelope
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈɛnvələʊp/
ipa: /ˈɒnvələʊp/
note: chiefly a wrapping
ipa: /ˈɒnvləʊp/
ipa: /ˈɑ̃vələʊp/
enpr: ĕn′vəlōp'
enpr: än′vəlōp'
ipa: /ˈɛnvəˌloʊp/
ipa: /ˈɑn-/
ipa: /-lop/
note: Indic
ipa: /ɛnvəˈlop/
note: Indic
ipa: /ˈɔnvəlop/
Forms: form: envelopes
Etymology: PIE word
 *h₁én
From French enveloppe. The engineering sense is derived from flight envelope. The verb is from the noun.
Senses: examples: text: 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.
ref: 2013 June 14, Jonathan Freedland, “Obama's once hip brand is now tainted”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 18:
glosses: A paper or cardboard wrapper used to enclose small, flat items, especially letters, for mailing.
synonyms: wrapper
glosses: Something that envelops; a wrapping.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1992, Lieutenant Colonel Donald E. Ryan, Jr, The airship's potential for intertheater and intratheater airlift, DIANE Publishing, page 46:
synonyms: gasbag
glosses: A bag containing the lifting gas of a balloon or airship; fabric that encloses the gas-bags of an airship.
topics: geometry
mathematics
sciences
glosses: A mathematical curve, surface, or higher-dimensional object that is the tangent to a given family of lines, curves, surfaces, or higher-dimensional objects.
topics: business
electrical-engineering
electricity
electromagnetism
electronics
energy
engineering
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
physics
glosses: A curve that bounds another curve or set of curves, as the modulation envelope of an amplitude-modulated carrier wave in electronics.
topics: entertainment
lifestyle
music
glosses: The shape of a sound, which may be controlled by a synthesizer or sampler.
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
networking
physical-sciences
sciences
synonyms: header
glosses: The information used for routing a message that is transmitted with the message but not part of its contents.
topics: biology
natural-sciences
glosses: An enclosing structure or cover, such as a membrane; a space between two membranes
examples: text: push the envelope
text: Few of the lads had ever been in combat and they knew little about the critical tolerances of fighter aircraft during violent maneuvers. They knew where the outside of the envelope was, but they didn't know about the part where you reached the outside and then stretched her a little . . .
ref: 1980, Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff, Bantam Books, →ISBN, page 350:
topics: engineering
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
glosses: The set of limitations within which a technological system can perform safely and effectively.
topics: astronomy
natural-sciences
glosses: The nebulous covering of the head or nucleus of a comet; a coma.
examples: text: make a blind all along the bottom of the ditch of the Envelope
ref: 1816, James Stanier Clarke, The Life of James the Second King of England:
glosses: An earthwork in the form of a single parapet or a small rampart, sometimes raised in the ditch and sometimes beyond it.
Derived terms: back-of-an-envelope
back-of-the-envelope
banker's envelope
blind envelope
brown envelope journalism
brown envelope syndrome
bubble envelope
building envelope
concave envelope
convex envelope
Dahlke envelope
envelogram
envelopathy
envelope detector
envelope paradox
envelope-stuffer
envelope stuffer
flight envelope
floral envelope
Gaza Envelope
invitation envelope
kinematic envelope
manila envelope
nuclear envelope
opening of an envelope
padded envelope
penalty envelope
push the edge of the envelope
push the envelope
red envelope
return envelope
stretch the envelope
stripped-envelope supernova
transenvelope
viral envelope
window envelope
work envelope