velvet

Etymology

It came into Middle English as veluet, velvet, borrowed from Old French veluotte, a noun formed on velu (“velvety, shaggy”),^[2][3][4][5] from Medieval Latin villūtus (“shaggy”), from Latin villus (“shaggy hair, tuft, nap”).^[2][3][6][7] Etymonline gives the immediate source as Anglo-French and Old French velvet,^[8] and Barnhart and the American Heritage Dictionary think it probably came by way of veluet, from Vulgar Latin *villūtittus, a diminutive of *villūtus.^[9][10][8] The OED instead takes it from velvetum (also veluetum), which seems to stand for a Romance diminutive of the type behind velluto and velludo.^[11] Weekley thought the -v- was a misreading of the -u- in the Anglo-Norman veluet.^[12] Barnhart and Etymonline take villus as probably a dialect form of vellus (“fleece”),^[9][8] and Barnhart traces it to Proto-Indo-European *wel- (“hair, wool”).^[9] Ayto notes that velvet is thus etymologically a "hairy" or "downy" fabric.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

A silk fabric with a short, dense, smooth pile on one side: 1320, in the wardrobe accounts of Edward II.^[11] Barnhart has the spelling veluett in 1327 and velvet in 1351,^[9] and Etymonline dates it to the early 14th century.^[8]

Semantic evolution

By the early 15th century the word was used for the soft downy skin covering a deer's growing antler (a1425, in the Master of Game).^[11][8][4] Figurative and allusive uses, for something soft and smooth, are recorded from the 1590s,^[11][8] and Johnson (1755) gave the adjective as "made of velvet" and "soft, delicate", with Shakespeare's "velvet friends".^[13] The phrase on velvet, in a comfortable or advantageous position, appears in 1749, in John Cleland,^[11] and in American slang velvet came to mean gain or winnings, especially money won easily (1901).^[11][14] Etymonline dates the image of the velvet glove for a gentle manner to 1850, often paired with the iron fist,^[8] and the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins dates the saying "an iron fist in a velvet glove" to the 1830s, when it was attributed to Napoleon.^[15] The velvet revolution of 1989 in Czechoslovakia took its name from the smoothness of the change.^[15] In 17th–18th-century thieves' cant velvet meant the tongue.^[16]

Timeline

• 1320 – a silk fabric with a short, dense pile.^[11]
• c1386 – a piece of velvet, in Chaucer's Squire's Tale.^[11]
• a1425 – the soft skin on a growing antler.^[11]
• 1594 – figurative and allusive uses.^[11]
• c1698 – (cant) the tongue.^[16]
• 1749 – on velvet, in an advantageous position.^[11]
• 1851 – a velvet dress.^[11]
• 1864 – verb, to make like velvet or cover with velvet.^[11]
• 1901 – (slang) gain, winnings.^[11]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A woven fabric of silk, cotton or a synthetic fibre with a thick, soft, short pile on one side: a jacket of dark green velvet.
2. Anything with a soft, smooth surface like this fabric; smoothness or softness.
3. The furry skin that covers a deer's antlers while they are growing.
4. (slang, chiefly US) Money won or gained, especially easily; profit.

Adjective

1. Made of or covered with velvet; soft and smooth like velvet: the velvet dark of a summer night.

Word family

• velvetlike
• velvetleaf
• velveteen
• black velvet
• crushed velvet
• velvet ant
• velvet bean

Related words

• velour
• velvety
• villus
• wool

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
6. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
10. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
15. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
16. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com