Other forms: velvets
Velvet is cloth with a short, dense pile that feels soft and looks deep. Stroke it one way and it darkens, stroke it back and it lights up — a velvet jacket, the red curtains in an old theatre, a ring sitting in a velvet-lined box.
Velvet works as an adjective in front of anything plush: velvet cushions, a velvet collar, the velvet rope at a club door. Velvety is for things that only feel like it — a velvety soup, a velvety voice. Jewellers and instrument makers line their cases with velvet because it scratches nothing and holds what you put on it. An iron fist in a velvet glove is hard control behind soft manners, and the Velvet Revolution was named for a change with no blood. The growing antlers of a deer are covered in velvet too, a furry skin the animal later rubs off against a tree.
1nounvelvetA woven cloth with a short, thick pile, soft to the touch and deep in colour.
“She wore a dark green velvet dress to the concert.”
2nounliningThat cloth used as a soft layer inside a case, a box or a tray.
“The rings sat in rows on the velvet lining of the tray.”
3adjectiverichMade of velvet, or as soft and rich as velvet.
“Velvet curtains hung from the ceiling to the floor.”
4nounfurryThe soft furry skin that covers a deer's antlers while they are growing.
“In midsummer the stag's antlers are still in velvet.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Velvet is named for hair. Latin villus meant shaggy hair or a tuft of hair; Vulgar Latin made a little diminutive of it, villutittus, which became Old Occitan veluet in the weaving towns of the south, and English took that as velvet. French kept its own version of the same idea in velours.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂welh₁-
Latin
villus — shaggy hair, tuft of hair
Vulgar Latin
*villutittus
Old Occitan
veluet
Middle English
velvet
English, today
velvet
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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA