velvet

Etymology

From Middle English velvet, velwet, veluet, from Old Occitan veluet, from Late Latin villutittus, diminutive of villūtus, from Latin villus (“shaggy hair, tuft of hair”). Cognate with French velours.

noun

1. A closely woven fabric (originally of silk, now also of cotton or man-made fibres) with a thick short pile on one side.
2. Very fine fur, including the skin and fur on a deer's antlers.
3. (rare, countable) A female chinchilla; a sow.
4. (slang, uncountable) The drug dextromethorphan.
5. (slang, uncountable) Money acquired by gambling.

verb

1. To cover with velvet or with a covering of a similar texture.
   Penmachno mill is situate where a stream has furrowed a deep channel, and velveted the rocks with the richest mosses […]. 1834, Edward Price, Norway. Views of Wild Scenery: and Journal, London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., Part I, p. 16
   Last week the scaffolds were up in the hall once more. This time the back wall is to be velveted in absorbent fiber glass […] 6 September 1963, “Childe Harold in New York”, in Time
2. (cooking) To coat raw meat in starch, then in oil, preparatory to frying.
   Blanching cut and specially marinated chicken in oil or water prior to stir-frying is a technique common to Chinese restaurant kitchens. The 20-second bath tenderizes the chicken remarkably, hence the process has been dubbed "velveting" in English. Velveted chicken is half-cooked, will not stick to the pan, and needs almost no oil when stir-fried. 1982, Barbara Tropp, The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking, Morrow, published 1982, page 137
3. To remove the velvet from a deer's antlers.
   2014, "Top genetic selection produces biggest antlers," NZFarmer.co.nz, 12 July, 2014, http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/agribusiness/10255646/Top-genetic-selection-produces-biggest-antlers Reacting to painkillers when velveted, Sovereign II was too sick to grow antlers last year, but has since recovered.
4. (figurative, transitive) To soften; to mitigate.
   She spoke very gently, full of compassion for the boy, velveting her reproach for me. 2006, Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale
5. (of a cat's claws) to retract.

adj

1. Made of velvet.
2. Soft and delicate, like velvet; velvety.
   The fawn then rose up, and creeping gently about the room, touched the cheeks or hands of the slumbering inmates with its velvet tongue, but so softly that none were awakened. 1878, John Beauchamp Jones, Wild Western Scenes, page 125
3. (politics) Peaceful; carried out without violence; especially as pertaining to the peaceful breakup of Czechoslovakia.
   What at the time of the initial agreement of Yeltsin, Shushkevich and Kravchuk to join together in a new 'Commonwealth of Independent States' had seemed like a reconstitution of the lands of ancient Rus, quickly turned out to be, in the words of the leading Russian-Ukrainian reformer Aleksandr Tsipko, merely a 'velvet disintegration'. 1995, Amin Saikal, William Maley, Russia in Search of Its Future, page 214
   The disintegration always took place within internal borders, whether it was velvet, as in the case of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, or bloody, like Yugoslavia's still unfinished break-up. 2006, The Analyst: Central and Eastern European Review
   If the Sudanese can resolve the final steps in a velvet divorce and move in a more democratic direction, that will serve as a heartening "ideal model of change" […] 2011, David Gillies, Elections in Dangerous Places: Democracy and the Paradoxes of Peacebuilding, page 248
   “I was once invited to give a speech about the attempt to topple Iran's political system through a ‘velvet revolution,’ ” says Etaat in the debate, “but we all know that ‘velvet revolutions’ always occur in dictatorships.” 2011, Javad Etaat quoted in Hooman Majd, The Ayatollahs' Democracy: An Iranian Challenge, page 39
   There is such a thing as a velvet divorce: if Canada or Belgium were to split apart, the consequences would be unfortunate but manageable. 2014, Dana H. Allin, NATO's Balkan Interventions, page 97