Veal

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /viːl/

Definitions

1. Meat from a young calf, typically pale and tender due to the animal's age and diet
2. The flesh derived from a young bovine, known for its light color and remarkable tenderness due to the limited age and dietary factors of the animal
3. A type of meat sourced from juvenile cattle, characterized by its delicate texture and pale appearance resulting from the young age and specific diet of the animal

Etymology: The English word for the meat of a young calf comes from a Latin word meaning simply "calf." Latin "vitulus" gave rise to the diminutive "vitellus," a little calf, and that diminutive passed into Anglo-Norman as "veel" and then into Middle English. The English noun for the animal itself, "veal" as a meat-word, comes from the same stock, so the name of the meat is the name of the animal, shrunk to the size of a dinner plate. The Latin "vitellus" is a doublet of the English "vitellus" itself, meaning the yolk of an egg, which is a surprising relative: a calf and an egg yolk share one ancestor, because "vitellus" was used for the yellow of an egg as well as for a small animal. English kept the word for the calf's flesh and borrowed the egg-yolk sense separately, so the two words now look unrelated while sharing a root.

Synonyms: calf meat, young beef