velvet
Part of speech: noun
verb
adj
Morphological type: simple
Topics: cooking
food
government
lifestyle
politics
Etymology: From Middle English velvet, velwet, veluet, from Old Occitan veluet, from Vulgar Latin *villutittus, diminutive of villūtus, from Latin villus (“shaggy hair, tuft of hair”). Cognate with French velours.
Inflected forms:
form: velvets
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: velvets
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: velveting
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: velveted
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: velveted
pos: verb
tags: past
form: more velvet
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most velvet
pos: adj
tags: superlative
Senses:
gloss: A closely woven fabric (originally of silk, now also of cotton or man-made fibres) with a thick short pile on one side.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: For the first time since her husband's death, she had thrown off her weeds, and put on attire more suited to the occasion. She was richly, yet plainly dressed, in a purple velvet, with a hood of white point lace. Even her silent handmaids were surprised out of their ordinary propriety by her appearance.
She was a fat, round little woman, richly apparelled in velvet and lace,[…]; and the way she laughed, cackling like a hen, the way she talked to the waiters and the maid, […] all these unexpected phenomena impelled one to hysterical mirth, and made one class her with such immortally ludicrous types as Ally Sloper, the Widow Twankey, or Miss Moucher.
gloss: Very fine fur, including the skin and fur on a deer's antlers.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: His [a hart's] head when it commeth firſt out, hath a ruſſet pyll vpon it, the which is called Veluet, […]
gloss: A female chinchilla; a sow.
pos: noun
tags: countable
rare
gloss: The drug dextromethorphan.
pos: noun
tags: slang
uncountable
gloss: Money acquired by gambling.
pos: noun
tags: slang
uncountable
gloss: To cover with velvet or with a covering of a similar texture.
pos: verb
examples: Penmachno mill is situate where a stream has furrowed a deep channel, and velveted the rocks with the richest mosses […].
Last week the scaffolds were up in the hall once more. This time the back wall is to be velveted in absorbent fiber glass […]
gloss: To coat raw meat in starch, then in oil, preparatory to frying.
pos: verb
examples: Blanching cut and specially marinated chicken in oil or water prior to stir-frying is a technique common to Chinese restaurant kitchens. The 20-second bath tenderizes the chicken remarkably, hence the process has been dubbed "velveting" in English. Velveted chicken is half-cooked, will not stick to the pan, and needs almost no oil when stir-fried.
gloss: To remove the velvet from a deer's antlers.
pos: verb
examples: 2014, "Top genetic selection produces biggest antlers," NZFarmer.co.nz, 12 July, 2014, http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/agribusiness/10255646/Top-genetic-selection-produces-biggest-antlers
Reacting to painkillers when velveted, Sovereign II was too sick to grow antlers last year, but has since recovered.
gloss: To soften; to mitigate.
pos: verb
tags: figuratively
transitive
examples: She spoke very gently, full of compassion for the boy, velveting her reproach for me.
gloss: to retract.
pos: verb
gloss: Made of velvet.
pos: adj
gloss: Soft and delicate, like velvet; velvety.
pos: adj
examples: The fawn then rose up, and creeping gently about the room, touched the cheeks or hands of the slumbering inmates with its velvet tongue, but so softly that none were awakened.
the cowslip's velvet head
gloss: Peaceful; carried out without violence; especially as pertaining to the peaceful breakup of Czechoslovakia.
pos: adj
examples: What at the time of the initial agreement of Yeltsin, Shushkevich and Kravchuk to join together in a new 'Commonwealth of Independent States' had seemed like a reconstitution of the lands of ancient Rus, quickly turned out to be, in the words of the leading Russian-Ukrainian reformer Aleksandr Tsipko, merely a 'velvet disintegration'.
The disintegration always took place within internal borders, whether it was velvet, as in the case of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, or bloody, like Yugoslavia's still unfinished break-up.
If the Sudanese can resolve the final steps in a velvet divorce and move in a more democratic direction, that will serve as a heartening "ideal model of change" […]
“I was once invited to give a speech about the attempt to topple Iran's political system through a ‘velvet revolution,’ ” says Etaat in the debate, “but we all know that ‘velvet revolutions’ always occur in dictatorships.”
There is such a thing as a velvet divorce: if Canada or Belgium were to split apart, the consequences would be unfortunate but manageable.
Derived words: beggars' velvet
black velvet
cotton velvet
crushed velvet
on velvet
pink velvet cake
poor man's black velvet
purple velvet plant
red velvet
red velvet cake
red-velvet cake
red velvet mite
slashed velvet
stand on velvet
tip someone's velvet
Utrecht velvet
velvet ant
velvet antler
velvet ash
velvet bean
velvet cichlid
velvet cork
velvet crab
velvet divorce
velvet duck
velveteen
velvet flower
velvet glove
velvet handcuffs
velvet hippo
velvet leatherjacket
velvet noise
velvet paper
velvet pile
Velvet Revolution
velvet scoter
velvet shank
velvet spider
velvet tamarind
velvet water bug
velvet work
velvet worm
velvety
Translations: