passel
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of passel
First recorded in 1825–35; alteration of parcel
Explanation
You can use the noun passel when you're talking about a group or a bunch of something. Your friends might decide to hire a bus to drive a whole passel of kids to an amusement park. The informal passel is a great way to talk about a large but vague number of things or people, like a passel of cousins at Thanksgiving or a passel of puppies at the local animal shelter. Passel is a nineteenth century invention, a U.S. dialect version of parcel, "quantity, part, or portion."
Vocabulary lists containing passel
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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Wish
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"Spunk" by Zora Neale Hurston
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Then he secretly purchases a passel of tortoises; constructs a long-handled grabber; leans down from his balcony; extracts Alfie; and, each week, substitutes a slightly heavier impostor.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 23, 2026
Affordable, capable, and practical, the subcompact 2026 Subaru Crosstrek is also a passel of fun.
From MarketWatch • Nov. 26, 2025
First, the attorney general could not unilaterally throw the entire mass of non-grand jury Epstein evidence into the public domain, at least not without violating a passel of statutes and DOJ internal rules and norms.
From Slate • Jul. 21, 2025
Molly learns a passel of thinpgs in this surrealist, carnivalesque bildungsroman.
From Los Angeles Times • May 15, 2024
Gus and Bertha had a whole passel of cats, sleeping under the porch, sunning on the windowsills, swatting bees out in the garden.
From "Wish" by Barbara O'Connor
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
