When goods are shrink-wrapped, they sit inside a thin plastic skin that has been made to pull tight around them. The usual way is heat: you put the thing in a loose plastic bag or sheet, warm it, and the plastic shrinks until it hugs the shape. You see it on supermarket meat, stacks of bottles, and new toys still on the card. Shops like it because it keeps the thing clean, stops it sliding around, and shows if someone has already opened it — and though actually, it is also just cheap, and you can still see through it. Here the word is an adjective: shrink-wrapped cheese, a shrink-wrapped pack. It is everyday shop and factory talk, not fancy. People have stretched it, too: “shrink-wrapped software” once meant a program you bought in a plastic-wrapped box, not one you downloaded. It is not gift wrap. This plastic is not pretty paper, and the whole point is that it ends up tight.