VEIL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Veil

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noun

Veil n. (Written also vail)

Something hung up, or spread out, to intercept the view, and hide an object; a cover; a curtain; esp., a screen, usually of gauze, crape, or similar diaphnous material, to hide or protect the face. "The veil of the temple was rent in twain." "She, as a veil down to the slender waist, Her unadornéd golden tresses wore."

A cover; a disguise; a mask; a pretense. "(I will) pluck the borrowed veil of modesty from the so seeming Mistress Page."

(Bot.)

(a)

The calyptra of mosses.

(b)

A membrane connecting the margin of the pileus of a mushroom with the stalk; called also velum.

(Eccl.) A covering for a person or thing; as, a nun's veil; a paten veil; an altar veil.

(Zool.) Same as Velum, 3.

To take the veil (Eccl.), to receive or be covered with, a veil, as a nun, in token of retirement from the world; to become a nun.

verb

Veil v. t. (past & past part. veiled; pres. part. veiling) (Written also vail)

To throw a veil over; to cover with a veil. "Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight, Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined."

Fig.: To invest; to cover; to hide; to conceal. "To keep your great pretenses veiled."

See images of 'Veil'

Etymology of 'Veil'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Veil" Quotes from Famous Books

... wait. Almost with the closing of the street door upon the detectives and their prisoners, Mr. Blake followed by Mrs. Daniels and another lady whose thick veil and long cloak but illy concealed the patrician features and stately form of the Countess ...

— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green

... mythology veil past events in more or less obscurity, they do, in regard to circumcision, furnish considerable explanatory light on matters which would be otherwise hard to reconcile. Circumcision has been performed by the Chippeways, ...

— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... said she was mad: with the result that she lost her head completely. He declared that he would never let her marry Olivier. She vowed that she would marry him. The veil was rent. He saw that he was nothing to her. In his fatherly egoism it had never occurred to him, and he was angry. He swore that neither Olivier nor Christophe should ever set foot inside his house again. Jacqueline lost her temper, ...

— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... Her veil was down when I first saw her. Her features and her expression were but indistinctly visible to me. I could just vaguely perceive that she was young and beautiful; but, beyond this, though I might imagine much, I could ...

— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... for those whose mates had been torn from them, and Jean with a face flushed by talk. On ordinary occasions the majesty of the minister still cowed Jean, so that she could only gaze at him without shaking when in church, and then because she wore a veil. In the manse he was for taking a glance at sideways and then going away comforted, as a respectable woman may once or twice in a day look at her brooch in the pasteboard box as a means of helping her with her work. ...

— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

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