Veal

How to spell veal

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce veal

What does veal mean?

1. nounThe pale meat of a young calf, used as food.

Veal in a sentence

• The recipe calls for thin slices of veal pounded flat.

• Many restaurants now refuse to serve veal on welfare grounds.

Where does veal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes ultimately from the Latin vitulus, meaning a young calf. Latin formed a diminutive, vitellus, literally 'a little calf', and that softer form passed into Old French as veel, the term for both the young animal and its meat. English borrowed it from Anglo-French after the Norman Conquest, around the 1300s, which is why the meat on the plate often carries a French-derived name while the live animal on the farm keeps its older Germanic one, just as 'beef' sits beside 'cow' and 'mutton' beside 'sheep'. The same Latin root for 'calf' also lies behind 'vellum', the fine writing surface originally made from calfskin, so the two words are quietly related. The modern spelling keeps the 'ea' vowel team that French and Middle English handed down, which is the main thing to fix in memory: it rhymes with 'meal' and 'real' rather than with 'veil'.

How the word is built

• veal (from Latin vitulus: calf), an unanalysable single root noun in modern English