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velvety

UK/ˈvɛlvəti/US/ˈvɛlvəti/
adjectiveB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,386 of 15,258leans written

Velvety means soft and smooth to stroke. Velvety petals, a velvety texture, velvety smooth.

It works for touch, taste and sound alike — a velvety wine, a velvety voice — and in each the sense is smoothness with depth behind it. Velvet gets that feel from a dense pile of cut loops standing upright, which is why it looks different from different angles.

Definitions of velvety

  1. 1adjectivevelvetySoft and smooth to stroke.B2+

    “The puppy's ears were warm and velvety.”

velvety is a quality of texture.

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *h₂welh₁-

  2. Latin

    villus — shaggy hair, tuft of hair

  3. Vulgar Latin

    *villutittus

  4. Old Occitan

    veluet

  5. Middle English

    velvet

  6. English

    velvet

  7. English, today

    velvety

From velvet + -y. velvet comes 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

Practised in Texture & Touch

Practise this word

velvety in the wild

  • The dot-winged antwren (Microrhopias quixensis) or velvety antwren is a passerine bird in subfamily Thamnophilinae of family Thamnophilidae, the "typical antbirds".

    Dot-winged antwren

  • The dwarf fat-tailed mouse opossum (Thylamys velutinus), also known as the velvety fat-tailed opossum, is an opossum species from South America.

    Dwarf fat-tailed mouse opossum

  • The velvety myotis (Myotis simus), is a species of vesper bat from South America.

    Velvety myotis

  • The velvety free-tailed bat (Molossus molossus) is a species of bat found in North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean.

    Velvety free-tailed bat

  • The velvety fruit-eating bat (Enchisthenes hartii), also known as Hart's little fruit bat, is a species of bat in the family Phyllostomidae.

    Velvety fruit-eating bat

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

the veluet family

velvet

velvety — used about once every 20,553 pages · #13,386 · point at the bar for the others