container

From Middle English conteyner, equivalent to contain +‎ -er.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /kənˈteɪnə/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /kənˈteɪnɚ/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪnə(ɹ)

container (plural containers)

1. Someone who contains; something that contains.
   2. An item in which objects, materials or data can be stored or transported.

      Synonyms: see Thesaurus:container

   4. (transport) A very large, typically metal, box used for transporting goods.

      Synonyms: cargo container, shipping container

      • 1963 April, “Beyond the Channel: France: Freight stock of the future”, in Modern Railways, page 269:

        Will container development merely bring about a substitution for the body of the covered wagon? Probably not, in his view, but he believes that the size and tonnage of the container are likely to increase pari passu with the lifting capacity of handling appliances.

      • 2020 May 20, Industry Insider, “An online boost for freight”, in Rail, page 68:

        The specifiers of the Freightliner network had the foresight to base the rail journey on carrying ISO containers which are 8ft wide and originally 8ft tall (although now increased to a height of 9ft 6ins), with a variety of lengths.

      • 2025 December 29, Lindsay Jones, “A Newfoundland winter brings new risks to Coast Guard's biggest-ever operation. Crews at mercy of the elements as they work to clean up grounded ship”, in The Globe and Mail, page A1:

        On a damp and blustery morning, three-metre swells crash into the cracked hull of the MSC Baltic III, which was grounded on a pinnacle of rock on the west coast of Newfoundland earlier this year. The wind carries whiffs of rotten egg. Salvage crews in hard hats and neon yellow jackets inch along in a temporary cable car suspended high over the churning Atlantic. In a province with a long and dangerous maritime history, the Baltic's grounding in the roiling shallows of Cedar Cove last February is a story Newfoundlanders retell with incredulity. The cargo ship, en route to Corner Brook from Montreal, lost power in the early morning of Feb. 15 during a ferocious blizzard. The ship, packed with hundreds of containers of lumber, textiles, plastic beads, legumes and car parts, plus 1,600 metric tonnes of fuel, careered into the only safe harbour along a coast of towering cliffs. All 20 crew members were airlifted off the ship in a harrowing rescue by the Royal Canadian Air Force. Over the following months, salvage crews offloaded most of the 470 containers and siphoned out the fuel, which had hardened into an asphalt-like substance, in a multistage operation that involved heating it for days. At risk were local wildlife — migratory birds and the capelin and lobster that local fish harvesters rely on for their livelihoods. The goal of the work is to ready the ship for eventual dismantling and removal from the shoreline.

   5. (by extension) Someone who holds people in their seats or in a (reasonably) calm state.
   6. (computing)
      2. (file format) A file format that can hold various types of data.

         Synonym: container format

         • 2011, Cory Altheide, Harlan Carvey, Digital Forensics with Open Source Tools, page 187:

           As the MP4 container can store audio, video, or both, the M4A naming and file extension is used to hint that this MP4 container holds solely audio information.

      3. (object-oriented programming) An abstract data type whose instances are collections of other objects.
         • 2015, Ivor Horton, Using the C++ Standard Template Libraries, Apress, →ISBN, page 64:

           This advantage is the primary incentive for using a list container, rather than a vector or a deque.

      4. (graphical user interface) Any user interface component that can hold further (child) components.
         • 2007, Rich Tretola, Simon Barber, Renaun Erickson, Professional Adobe Flex 2, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 62:

           Flex automatically creates a TabBar container at the top of the TabNavigator container, with a tab corresponding to each child container. Each tab can have its own label and icon.

      5. (Java programming language) A web container.
      7. (cloud computing) A bundle consisting of operating system, application code and dependencies to be run sandboxed inside a virtualized environment; (by extension) the environment itself.

         Synonym: software container

         • 2017, Maddie Stigler, Beginning Serverless Computing, Apress, →ISBN, page 1:

           Generally, when people think of serverless computing, they tend to think of applications with back-ends that run on third-party services, also described as code running on ephemeral containers.

         • 2020, Elton Stoneman, chapter 1, in Learn Docker in a Month of Lunches, →ISBN:

           The application components all run in containers. They are isolated like VMs but lightweight and efficient like PaaS services.

   7. (crosswording) A type of cryptic device where one word is inserted into another.
      • 2012 June 13, Denise Sutherland, Solving Cryptic Crosswords For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 48:

        As with all varieties of cryptic clues, the container device can be used in conjunction with other devices, especially in more complex cryptic crosswords.

      • 2013 July 1, John P.Stewart, Don't Let Cryptic Crossword Clues Fool You: Intellectual Stimulation and Mental Alertness Guaranteed, Booktango, →ISBN:

        Container word clues are actually three clues in one.

      • 2020 August 20, Telegraph Media Group Ltd, The Telegraph: How To Solve a Cryptic Crossword: Mastering cryptic crosswords made easy, Hachette UK, →ISBN, page 23:

        We have already mentioned 'in' having multiple uses; 'round' or 'around' might be a container indicator or a reversal indicator; 'without' might be a container indicator or a deletion indicator, and so on.

• container on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• anorectin, cotarnine, crenation, narcotine

Borrowed from English container.

• IPA^(key): /ˌkɔnˈteː.nər/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: con‧tai‧ner
• Rhymes: -eːnər

container m (plural containers, diminutive containertje n)

1. shipping container, cargo container

   Synonym: vrachtcontainer

2. dumpster or domestic recycling bin, large waste container

   Synonyms: afvalcontainer, vuilcontainer

• → Indonesian: kontainer

Borrowed from English container (during the 1920s).

• IPA^(key): /kɔ̃.tɛ.nɛʁ/ ~ /kɔ̃.te.nɛʁ/

• Audio (France (Vosges)):

  (file)

container f (plural containers)

1. container

   Synonym: conteneur

• → Turkish: konteyner
• → Vietnamese: công-te-nơ

• “container”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

• actionner, connaitre, connaître, encornait, reconnait, reconnaît, renonçait

Unadapted borrowing from English container.

• IPA^(key): /konˈtɛj.ner/, /konˈtaj.ner/^[1]
• Rhymes: -ɛjner, -ajner
• Hyphenation: con‧tài‧ner

• Audio:

  (file)

container m (invariable)

1. (cargo) container (a very large, typically metal, box used for transporting goods)

• containerizzare

• container in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

• canterino, citeranno, incanterò, incornate, narcotine, recintano, roncinate

• konteiner

From English container.

container m (definite singular containeren, indefinite plural containere, definite plural containerne)

1. a container (large metal box for transporting goods)

• containerhavn
• containerskip

• “container” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

• konteinar

From English container.

container m (definite singular containeren, indefinite plural containerar, definite plural containerane)

1. a container (large metal box for transporting goods)

• containerskip

• “container” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

container m (plural containers)

1. alternative spelling of contêiner

• “container”, in Dicionário Aulete Digital (in Portuguese), Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon Editora Digital, 2008–2026
• “container”, in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Lisbon: Priberam, 2008–2026

Unadapted borrowing from English container.

container n (plural containere)

1. shipping container

Unadapted borrowing from English container.

• IPA^(key): (unadapted) /konˈteineɾ/ [kõn̪ˈt̪ei̯.neɾ]
  • Rhymes: -eineɾ
• IPA^(key): (semi-adapted) /konˈtaineɾ/ [kõn̪ˈt̪ai̯.neɾ]
  • Rhymes: -aineɾ
• IPA^(key): (adapted) /kontaiˈneɾ/ [kõn̪.t̪ai̯ˈneɾ]
  • Rhymes: -eɾ
  • Syllabification: con‧tai‧ner

container m (plural containers)

1. container

   Synonym: contenedor

According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.

• “container”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025
• Manuel Seco; Olimpia Andrés; Gabino Ramos (3 August 2023), “container”, in Diccionario del español actual [Dictionary of Current Spanish] (in Spanish), third digital edition, Fundación BBVA [BBVA Foundation]

Borrowed from English container. First attested in 1936.

• IPA^(key): /kɔnˈtɛjnɛr/

container c

2. a container (cargo container)

   Hypernym: lastbärare

   två containrar föll överbord

   two containers fell overboard

4. a dumpster

   Synonyms: sopcontainer, avfallscontainer

   Släng soporna i containern

   Throw the garbage in the dumpster

   Det kan vara farligt att leka i en container

   Playing in a dumpster can be dangerous

• avfallscontainer (“dumpster”)
• fraktcontainer (���shipping container”)
• godscontainer (“cargo container”)
• lastcontainer (“cargo container”)
• sopcontainer (“dumpster”)

• container in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• container in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)

• (Hà Nội) IPA^(key): [kəwŋ͡m˧˧ tɛn˧˧ nəː˧˧]
• (Huế) IPA^(key): [kəwŋ͡m˧˧ tɛŋ˧˧ nəː˧˧]
• (Saigon) IPA^(key): [kəwŋ͡m˧˧ tɛŋ˧˧ nəː˧˧]
• Phonetic spelling: công ten nơ

(classifier chiếc) container

1. (road transport) alternative form of công-te-nơ (“semi-trailer truck”)
   • 2007 August 8, Trần Duy, “Đồng Nai - "thủ phủ" những cây cầu chờ sập [Đồng Nai – "capital" of bridges waiting to collapse]”, in Người Lao Động‎^[1], Ho Chi Minh City, sourced from VietnamNet, retrieved 24 September 2025:

     Một chiếc container từ ngã ba Tân Vạn chạy đến. "Rầm! Rầm! Rầm!". Chiếc cầu rung rinh, lắc võng khi chiếc container lần lượt chạy qua từng nhịp cầu.

     A semi-trailer truck came from Tân Vạn intersection. Foom foom foom! The bridge rattled and heaved as the semi-trailer truck crossed each span of the bridge.