Veiled

How to spell veiled

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce veiled

What does veiled mean?

1. adjectivePartly concealed or only thinly disguised, so the real meaning is hidden but still detectable.
2. adjectiveCovered or obscured by a veil, cloth, mist, or similar screening layer.

Veiled in a sentence

• The email contained a barely veiled threat about missed deadlines.

• The distant hills lay veiled in early morning mist.

• Her polite reply carried a veiled criticism of the whole project.

• The bride remained veiled until she reached the altar.

Where does veiled come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin velum, which meant a cloth, sail, or covering, the same root that gives us 'reveal' (literally to draw back the covering) and the fabric term 'voile'. Latin velum passed into Old French as 'veile' or 'voile', and English adopted the noun 'veil' in the early 1200s for the cloth a woman wore over her face or head. The verb followed, meaning to cover or conceal with such a cloth, and 'veiled' is its past participle and adjective form. A figurative sense grew up alongside the literal one, so that by the 1500s a thing could be 'veiled' meaning hidden or only thinly disguised. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the 'ei' order breaks the familiar 'i before e' habit, because this word never had a 'c' to trigger the rule, it simply inherited the French vowel order.

How the word is built

• veil (covering, from Latin velum)
• -ed (past participle / adjective suffix)