Veil

How to spell veil

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce veil

What does veil mean?

1. nounA piece of fine fabric worn to cover the head or face, or anything that conceals or obscures.
2. verbTo cover, conceal, or obscure something from view.

Veil in a sentence

• noun

  The bride lifted her veil before the ceremony began.

• verb

  Heavy clouds began to veil the summit from the climbers below.

• noun

  A thin veil of fabric covered the antique mirror in the hallway.

• verb

  Officials tried to veil the true cost of the project from auditors.

Where does veil come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin velum, which meant a covering, a curtain, or the sail of a ship. The plural form vela passed into Anglo-Norman and Old French as veil or voile, narrowing in sense to a cloth worn over the head or face. English adopted it in the early 1200s, first describing the head covering worn by nuns and later the lighter fabric draped by brides and mourners. The same Latin root survives in the French word voile for a sail or thin fabric, and in 'reveal', which literally means to draw back the covering. The spelling trap is real: 'veil' shares its sound with 'vale' (a valley), but only 'veil' keeps the e-before-i pattern inherited from its French covering.

How the word is built

• veil (from Latin velum: a covering, curtain or sail)