Velocity

How to spell velocity

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce velocity

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does velocity mean?

1. nounThe speed at which something moves, especially when measured in a given direction.
2. nounThe rate or speed at which something develops, spreads, or happens.

Velocity in a sentence

• The radar gun measured the velocity of every passing car.

• The velocity of the company's growth surprised even its founders.

• Engineers calculated the exact velocity needed for the rocket to reach orbit.

• The news spread across the office with alarming velocity.

Where does velocity come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin noun velocitas, meaning 'swiftness' or 'speed', which was built on the adjective velox, 'fast' or 'rapid'. English picked it up in the early 1500s, at first by way of French vitesse-style learned borrowing and the Latin form directly, to mean simple quickness of motion. In the seventeenth century, as the new science of mechanics took shape, velocity acquired a sharper technical sense: not just speed, but speed in a particular direction, distinct from how physicists use 'speed' alone. The same velox root quietly survives in the bird name 'velociraptor', coined in 1924 to mean 'swift seizer'. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle: the stress falls on the second syllable, so the 'o' and the surrounding vowels all blur to a schwa, and writers often hesitate over whether it is 'veloc-ity' or 'velos-ity'.

How the word is built

• veloc- (from Latin velox: swift, rapid)
• -ity (noun-forming suffix denoting a quality or state)