container

[ kuhn-tey-ner ]

noun

1. anything that contains or can contain something, as a carton, box, crate, or can.
2. a large, vanlike, reuseable box for consolidating smaller crates or cartons into a single shipment, designed for easy and fast loading and unloading of freight.

container

/ kənˈteɪnə /

noun

1. an object used for or capable of holding, esp for transport or storage, such as a carton, box, etc
2. 1. a large cargo-carrying standard-sized container that can be loaded from one mode of transport to another
   2. ( as modifier )

      a container ship

      a container port

Word History and Origins

Origin of container¹

1400–50 for an earlier sense; 1495–1505 container fordef 1; late Middle English conteiner; contain, -er ¹

Example Sentences

In one set of experiments, he stressed the animals by trapping them inside a wire-mesh container for 30 minutes.

From Science News For Students

Some TVs can’t decode certain formats, like DTS or Dolby Atmos, which means this trick won’t work on movies encoded in those containers.

From Popular-Science

Engineer Charles Carron of Grenoble, Switzerland, suggested that a 40-foot-long, 20,000-pound, bullet-shaped container should be added to the tower’s silhouette.

From Ozy

Officers then carried out an hours-long raid on the publication’s offices, cordoning off large sections of the newsroom and carting away containers full of confiscated material, as the newspaper’s staff live-streamed the proceedings.

From Quartz

The carved stone container holds a miniature llama or alpaca carved from a spiny oyster shell and a gold sheet rolled into a cylinder about the length of a paperclip, the scientists report in the August Antiquity.

From Science News

After walking block after block holding that container, he had suddenly discarded it and was now clutching a gun.

From The Daily Beast

They should be brought out one at a time and used immediately, rather than possibly leaving a container open.

From The Daily Beast

We fill every container, bucket and bathtub in the house and it lasts us until the next time.

From The Daily Beast

As a test, Sun shipped over a container stuffed with apparel made in his home province.

From The Daily Beast

A heavy trowel is used to retrieve a mass of your chosen kind of ice cream from its tub and put it in the cardboard container.

From The Daily Beast

He reached into the plastic container and drew forth a handful of brownish objects that smelled to Kieran like dried fruit.

From Project Gutenberg

The most common relations are cause and effect, container and thing contained, and sign and the thing signified.

From Project Gutenberg

An empty cigarette box can be easily changed to a useful container for talking-machine needles, as shown in the sketch.

From Project Gutenberg

Misagàsà ang sag-ub nga natumba sa batu, The bamboo container went crack when it fell on the stones.

From Project Gutenberg

Ikay nagsalsag sa sag-ub, You broke the bamboo tube water container into slivers.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• bag
• bottle
• bowl
• box
• bucket
• can
• canister
• capsule
• carton
• crate
• dish
• jar
• jug
• kettle
• package
• packet
• pail
• pot
• pouch
• sack