Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of or relating to a velum.
  • adjective Concerning or using the soft palate.
  • adjective Articulated with the back of the tongue touching or near the soft palate, as (g) in good and (k) in king.
  • noun A velar consonant.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of or pertaining to a veil or velum; forming or formed into a velum; specifically, in philology, noting certain sounds, as those represented by the letters gw, kw, qu, produced by the aid of the veil of the palate, or soft palate.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to a velum; esp. (Anat.) of or pertaining to the soft palate.
  • adjective (Phon.) Having the place of articulation on the soft palate; guttural.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective phonetics Articulated at the velum or soft palate.
  • adjective mycology Referring to a veil.
  • noun phonetics a sound articulated at the soft palate

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of or relating to the velum
  • noun a consonant produced with the back of the tongue touching or near the soft palate
  • adjective produced with the back of the tongue touching or near the soft palate (as `k' in `cat' and `g' in `gun' and `ng' in `sing')

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin velaris.

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Examples

  • One of these major issues with the sound system involves the so-called velar stops, that is, the reconstructed sounds *ḱ, *k, *ǵ, *g, *ǵʰ and *gʰ.

    Reinterpreting the Proto-Indo-European velar series 2007

  • One of these major issues with the sound system involves the so-called velar stops, that is, the reconstructed sounds *ḱ, *k, *ǵ, *g, *ǵʰ and *gʰ.

    Archive 2007-10-01 2007

  • But a Spanish J is not the equivalent of a Y, it is a velar fricative.

    Gallstones of the Unexamined Life « Unknowing 2010

  • The S is substituted there with an English H or the velar fricative that in Spanish is nowadays a J in many occasions.

    7 The Journey Back « Unknowing 2010

  • No one was quite sure where it had come from, but it had travelled with the K, they were the two voiceless velar Semitic consonants, they went back to the desert, to caph and koph.

    The Best American Poetry 2010 Amy Gerstler 2010

  • Here, the replacement of word-medial -h- with a velar stop is what we'd expect of Aegean languages which bar this sound in these positions.

    Translating Etruscan zuci 2010

  • No one was quite sure where it had come from, but it had travelled with the K, they were the two voiceless velar Semitic consonants, they went back to the desert, to caph and koph.

    The Best American Poetry 2010 Amy Gerstler 2010

  • Drifting down the river in silence, the lovers indulge, by velar and glottal tension as well as ethical laxity, in a "grave untiring gaze" of reciprocated desire that seems released from the phonemic chiasm of "solitude" and

    Phonemanography: Romantic to Victorian 2008

  • I think that we all deserve pats on the back for retaining the spelling knight after losing the silent velar fricative that once started the word, and for successfully mastering learning the various sound sequences that that master of disguise ough can hide (bough, trough, plough, through, tough, etc.).

    Preposterous Apostrophes VII: Why Won’t Willn’t Work? « Motivated Grammar 2008

  • No one was quite sure where it had come from, but it had travelled with the K, they were the two voiceless velar Semitic consonants, they went back to the desert, to caph and koph.

    The Best American Poetry 2010 Amy Gerstler 2010

Comments

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  • JM is trying to get his mind out of the velar.

    March 24, 2011