verb, transitive. To fill a suitcase or bag especially with clothes and other items needed when away from home. To place something in a container, especially for transportation or storage.
verb, intransitive. To be capable of being folded up for transportation or storage.
Also a noun.
The road hurtled beneath the car's wheels like a length of gray roving being wound onto a spindle. Whenever Mary's mind began to wander, she often found it exploring fiber metaphors. She found this phenomenon curious, because she knitted and crocheted only occasionally, and had never learned to spin or weave.
The reason for her wandering attention today was another lecture on firearms. He could talk about guns for hours on end: bullet caliber, powder weight, velocity.... She found it incomprehensible that he could remember so many technical details about rifles and handguns, but not remember the date of her birthday. She was just aware enough of his spiel to utter "Unh-huh" at appropriate times. He would not take it well if he realized that she had shut him out completely.
Suddenly, she thought of the revolver she had packed in her suitcase in the trunk. It was loaded. Instead of alarm, the thought gave her a peculiar feeling of satisfaction. It was possible, she reflected, that retreating into visions of yarn and sweater designs was not the only possible form of escape.
Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.
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