Dictionary Definition
envelope
Noun
1 a flat rectangular paper container for
papers
2 any wrapper or covering
3 a curve that is tangent to each of a family of
curves
4 a natural covering (as by a fluid); "the
spacecraft detected an envelope of gas around the comet"
5 the maximum operating capability of a system;
"test pilots try to push the envelope"
6 the bag containing the gas in a balloon [syn:
gasbag]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Pronunciation
Noun
envelope (plural envelopes)- A paper or cardboard wrapper used to enclose and small, flat items, especially letters, for mailing.
- Something that envelops; a wrapping
- A bag containing the lifting gas of a balloon or airship.
- A mathematical curve, surface, or higher-dimensional object that is the tangent to a given family of lines, curves, surfaces, or higher-dimensional objects.
- A curve that bounds another curve or set of curves, as the modulation envelope of an amplitude-modulated carrier wave in electronics.
- The shape of a sound, which may be controlled by a synthesizer or sampler.
- The information used for routing an email that is transmitted with the email but not part of its contents.
- An enclosing structure or cover, such as a membrane.
- The set of limitations within which a technological system can perform safely and effectively.
Translations
wrapper for mailing
- Albanian: zarf g Albanian
- Catalan: sobre de carta
- Czech: obálka
- Danish: kuvert, konvolut
- Dutch: envelop, enveloppe, briefomslag , omslag
- Estonian: ümbrik
- Finnish: kirjekuori
- French: enveloppe
- German: Briefumschlag, Umschlag
- Greek: φάκελος (fakelos)
- Hebrew: מעטפה (ma'atafa)
- Italian: busta
- Japanese: 封筒 (ふうとう, fuutou)
- Korean: 봉투
- Mandarin: (xìnfēng)
- Polish: koperta
- Portuguese: envelope
- Romanian: plic
- Russian: конверт
- Spanish: sobre
- Swedish: kuvert, konvolut
something that envelops
- German: Umschlag
- Swedish: konvolut, omslag
bag containing the lifting gas
- Swedish: hölje
geometry: object that is the tangent to a family
of objects
electronics: curve that bounds a set of
curves
music: shape of a sound
computing: routing information of an email
biology: enclosing structure or cover
- Swedish: hylle
engineering: limits within which a technological
system can perform safely and effectively
Translations to be checked
See also
Extensive Definition
An envelope is a packaging product, usually
made of flat, planar material such as paper or cardboard, and designed
to contain a flat object, which in a postal-service context is
usually a letter,
card or bills. The traditional type is made from a sheet of paper
cut to one of three shapes: the rhombus (also referred to as a
lozenge or diamond), the short-arm cross, and the kite. These
designs ensure that in the course of envelope
manufacture when the sides of the sheet are folded about a
delineated central rectangular area, a rectangular-faced, usually
oblong, enclosure is formed with an arrangement of four flaps on
the reverse side, which, by virtue of the shapes of sheet
traditionally used, is inevitably symmetrical.
In 1876 William Irwin Martin published the
Stationer's Handbook. He worked for the Samuel Raynor & Company
in New York. He created the first commercial sizes of envelopes and
simply numbered them from 0 through 12. It was mostly for social
and business stationery purposes in those days. That's how the No.
10 envelope got its name.
Overview
When the folding sequence is such that the last
flap to be closed is on a short side it is referred to in
commercial envelope
manufacture as a '"pocket"' - a format frequently employed in
the packaging of small
quantities of seeds. Although in principle the flaps can be held in
place by securing the topmost flap at a single point (for example
with a wax seal), generally they are pasted or gummed together at
the overlaps. They are most commonly used for enclosing and sending
mail (letters)
through a prepaid-postage postal
system.
Window envelopes have a hole cut in the front
side that allows the paper within to be seen. They are generally
arranged so that the sending address printed on the letter is
visible, saving the sender from having to duplicate the address on
the envelope itself. The window is normally covered with a
transparent or translucent film to protect the letter inside, as
was first designed by Americus F.
Callahan in 1901 and patented the following year. In some
cases, shortages of materials or the need to economize resulted in
envelopes that had no film covering the window. One innovative
process, invented in Europe about 1905, involved using hot oil to
saturate the area of the envelope where the address would appear.
The treated area became sufficiently translucent for the address to
be readable. A typical use for window envelopes is courtesy
reply mail.
An aerogram is related to a
lettersheet, both
being designed to have writing on the inside to minimize the
weight. Any handmade envelope is effectively a lettersheet because
prior to the folding stage it offers the opportunity for writing a
message on that area of the sheet that after folding becomes the
inside of the face of the envelope.
The "envelope" used to launch the Penny
Post component of the British postal reforms of 1840 was a
lozenge-shaped lettersheet known as a Mulready.
But if desired, a separate letter could be enclosed with postage
remaining one penny, provided the combined weight did not exceed
half an ounce (about 13 grams). This was a legacy of the previous
system of calculating postage, which partly depended on the number
of sheets of paper used.
During the U.S. Civil War those in the CSA
occasionally used envelopes made from wallpaper, due to financial
hardship.
A "return envelope" is a pre-addressed, smaller
envelope included as the contents of a larger envelope and can be
used for courtesy reply mail, metered
reply mail, or freepost (business reply mail).
Some envelopes are designed to be reused as the return envelope,
saving the expense of including a return envelope in the contents
of the original envelope. The direct mail
industry makes extensive use of return envelopes as a response
mechanism.
Up until 1840 all envelopes were handmade, each
being individually cut to the appropriate shape out of an
individual rectangular sheet. In that year George Wilson in the
U.K.
patented the method of tessellating (tiling) a
number of envelope patterns across and down a large sheet, thereby
reducing the overall amount of waste produced per envelope when
they were cut out. In 1845 Edwin
Hill (U.K.) and Warren
de la Rue obtained a patent for a steam-driven machine that not only
cut out the envelope shapes but creased and folded them as well.
(Mechanised gumming had
yet to be devised.) The convenience of the sheets ready cut to
shape popularized the use of machine-made envelopes, and the
economic significance of the factories that had produced handmade
envelopes gradually diminished.
As envelopes are made of paper, they are
intrinsically amenable to embellishment with additional graphics
and text over and above the necessary postal markings. This is a
feature that the direct mail
industry has long taken advantage of -- and more recently the
Mail Art
movement. Custom printed envelopes has also become an increasingly
popular marketing method for small
business.
Most of the over 400 billion envelopes of all
sizes made worldwide are machine-made. Some will be made by hand.
These include some of the eastern poorer countries.
Post office requirements
Post offices prefer envelopes to be rectangular rather than square, as this reduces the amount of sorting that is needed to line up all the envelopes with the addresses reading the same way.In some countries using postcodes, common envelopes
are preprinted with lines and boxes that help write those postcodes
in a consistent way in a consistent position.
Things other than envelopes have been also used,
such as Ziploc bags.http://www.iuoma.org/extrememail.html
In Australia, post
office-preferred envelopes have four boxes printed in orange ink at
the bottom right-hand corner where handwritten postcodes are meant to be
written. Character recognition software is used to read the
postcode number.
Envelopes in the Soviet Union
were printed with something like the common 7 segment LCD, to
assist the user to write the 6-character postcode directly in
machine-readable format.
External links
- International standard paper sizes: ISO 216 details and rationale
- ISO 216 at iso.org
- Envelopes made out of tin / metal
- Envelope Sizes
Phrases
envelope in Arabic: ظرف
envelope in German: Briefumschlag
envelope in Spanish: Sobre
envelope in French: Enveloppe (papeterie)
envelope in Italian: Busta
envelope in Hebrew: מעטפה
envelope in Dutch: Envelop
envelope in Japanese: 封筒
envelope in Polish: Koperta (opakowanie)
envelope in Portuguese: Envelope (papel)
envelope in Russian: Конверт
envelope in Simple English: Envelope
envelope in Finnish: Kirjekuori
envelope in Swedish: Kuvert
envelope in Thai: ซองจดหมาย
envelope in Chinese: 信封
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
aura,
bandage, bandaging, binder, binding, blaze of glory,
border, brilliance, brilliancy, charisma, circumference, cortex, covering, crust, dust jacket, envelopment, epidermis, exterior, external, facade, face, facet, fringe, front, gift wrapping, glamour, glory, halo, illustriousness,
integument, jacket, lineaments, luster, magic, mystique, nimbus, numinousness, outer face,
outer layer, outer side, outer skin, outline, outside, periphery, radiance, resplendence, resplendency, rind, shell, skin, splendor, superficies, superstratum, surface, top, wrap, wrapper, wrapping