velum

1. 1.

   a membranous covering attached to the immature fruiting body of certain mushrooms

   Synonymsveil

   Broaderplant part

   Narroweruniversal veilpartial veil
2. 2.

   a muscular flap that closes off the nasopharynx during swallowing or speaking

   Synonymssoft palate

   Broaderflap

   Part ofpalate

   Partsuvula

Other forms of velum

plural

vela

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about velum

What does velum mean?

velum means "a membranous covering attached to the immature fruiting body of certain mushrooms". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in velum?

velum has 2 syllables: ve-lum. The stress falls on "ve".

What is another word for velum?

Close synonyms include veil, soft palate. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is velum a common word?

velum is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.