The corpus record — Latin

vellus

vellus · n

wool shorn off

Generated live from the audited Latin corpus — every figure on this page is a database query, not prose from memory.

Where it lives

Medicamina faciei femineae 1 · 16.31/10k
Argonautica 43 · 11.57/10k
Antoninus Geta 1 · 8.13/10k
Panegyricus de tertio consulatu Honorii Augusti 1 · 7.24/10k
Technopaegnion 1 · 6.73/10k
Panegyricus dictus Probino et Olybrio consulibus 1 · 5.88/10k
Eclogues 2 · 4.41/10k
Georgicon 6 · 4.24/10k
Culex, Appendix Vergiliana 1 · 3.83/10k
Apocolocyntosis 1 · 3.69/10k
In Rufinum 2 · 3.49/10k
Epodon 1 · 3.33/10k

Densest 12 of 47 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

vellus — Lewis & Short

vellus, ĕris, n.Sanscr. ura for vara, sheep; root var, to cover; Gr. e)/r-ion, ei)=ros, wool; Goth. vulla; Germ. Wolle.

I Lit., wool shorn off, a fleece: pastores Palatini ex ovibus ante tonsuram inventam vellere lanam sunt soliti: a quo vellera dicuntur, Varr. L. L. 5, §§ 54 and 130 Müll.; id. R. R. 2, 11, 9; Plin. 27, 7, 28, § 50; Lucr. 6, 504; Hor. Epod. 12, 21; id. Ep. 1, 10, 27; Ov. M. 6, 21; 14, 264.—

II Transf.

1 The skin of a sheep with the wool on it, the fell or pelt entire, Col. 7, 4, 4; Tib. 2, 1, 62; Verg. E. 3, 95; id. A. 7, 95; Ov. H. 18, 144; id. F. 5, 102.

2 The hide, pelt of any other animal: fulvi leonis, Ov. F. 2, 340; cf. id. ib. 5, 396: cervina, id. M. 6, 593; cf. id. ib. 3, 197: ferina, id. ib. 11, 4.—

3 A sheep: cultrosque in guttura velleris atri Conicit, Ov. M. 7, 244; cf. Calp. Ecl. 2, 7.—

B Of woolly material.

1 Wool, down: velleraque ut foliis depectant tenuia Seres, i. e. the fleeces or flocks of silk, Verg. G. 2, 121.—

2 Of light, fleecy clouds: tenuia nec lanae per caelum vellera ferri, Verg. G. 1, 397; so Luc. 4, 124.—

3 Of snow-flakes, Mart. 4, 3, 1.—

C Of things made of wool: Parnasia, woollen bands or fillets, Stat. S. 5, 3, 8.

In the wild

vellusque Vitruvius, De Architectura 8.1.5
vellera Martial, Epigrammata 11.27.8
vellera Catullus, Carmina long_poems.64.319
Velleribus Martial, Epigrammata 14.155.1
vellera Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 1.88
vellus Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 9.38

6 of 167 attestations shown.

Where it came from

No etymology authority pointer is recorded for this lemma yet — an honest gap, not an omission.

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Latin text and lemmatization derived from the Perseus Digital Library (canonical-latinLit), CC BY-SA 4.0. Lewis & Short (public domain) via Perseus. This derived data is shared under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 license.