Vellus

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A category of short, soft hair that primarily exists on the skin of humans, particularly noticeable before adolescence
2. A kind of lightweight, fine body hair that plays a role in skin protection and is prominent during early life stages
3. A type of very thin, soft hair that covers much of the skin before puberty and is usually unpigmented

Etymology: Before it named the soft down on a child's skin, "vellus" meant simply a fleece, the wool shorn from a sheep. The Latin noun was a learned borrowing into English, so it reached the language through scholars and medical writers rather than everyday speech, and it kept its original sense of fleecy, woolly covering. The connection to sheep is still visible in the word's core. Anatomists adopted it because the fine hair covering a child's body looked to them like a light, woolly coat, and the term picked out that thin, pale fuzz from the coarser hair that grows later. The word therefore carries a picture of wool into a discussion of human skin.

Synonyms: fine hair, downy hair, fuzzy hair, soft hair, peach fuzz

Antonyms: terminal hair, coarse hair, thick hair, strong hair, stiff hair