Veals

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Meat derived from young calves used as food ; young calves themselves before maturity ; to produce or supply meat from young bovines
2. Flesh of immature cattle consumed as nourishment ; juvenile calves yet to mature ; the act of harvesting or obtaining meat from young bovines
3. Edible muscle tissue obtained from young cattle ; the animals during their early life stage ; process of providing or yielding meat from calves

Etymology: "Veals" is simply the plural of "veal", the meat of young calves, and the plural of a mass noun like this one is used mainly when referring to several kinds or cuts of it. The base word has a fairly direct route into English: it came from Middle English "veel", which was borrowed from Anglo-Norman "veel", and ultimately from Latin "vitellus", a diminutive of "vitulus", meaning "calf". That Latin source also gave English a doublet. "Vitellus" was passed down into English in a second form, "vitellus" itself, which entered the language as a technical term for the yolk of an egg, so the same Latin root that produced the meat word also produced a word for the yellow centre of an egg. The meat sense simply reflects the older, more everyday use of the root: a calf was the animal most people would have encountered as food.

Synonyms: calves, young cattle, baby cows, veal calves, veal meat