VELOCITY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Velocity

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/vəlˈɑsəti/ Listen

noun

Velocity n. (pl. velocities)

1.

Quickness of motion; swiftness; speed; celerity; rapidity; as, the velocity of wind; the velocity of a planet or comet in its orbit or course; the velocity of a cannon ball; the velocity of light. Note: In such phrases, velocity is more generally used than celerity. We apply celerity to animals; as, a horse or an ostrich runs with celerity; but bodies moving in the air or in ethereal space move with greater or less velocity, not celerity. This usage is arbitrary, and perhaps not universal.

2.

(Mech.) Rate of motion; the relation of motion to time, measured by the number of units of space passed over by a moving body or point in a unit of time, usually the number of feet passed over in a second. See the Note under Speed.

Angular velocity. See under Angular.

Initial velocity, the velocity of a moving body at starting; especially, the velocity of a projectile as it leaves the mouth of a firearm from which it is discharged.

Relative velocity, the velocity with which a body approaches or recedes from another body, whether both are moving or only one.

Uniform velocity, velocity in which the same number of units of space are described in each successive unit of time.

Variable velocity, velocity in which the space described varies from instant to instant, either increasing or decreasing; in the former case called accelerated velocity, in the latter, retarded velocity; the acceleration or retardation itself being also either uniform or variable.

Virtual velocity. See under Virtual. Note: In variable velocity, the velocity, strictly, at any given instant, is the rate of motion at that instant, and is expressed by the units of space, which, if the velocity at that instant were continued uniform during a unit of time, would be described in the unit of time; thus, the velocity of a falling body at a given instant is the number of feet which, if the motion which the body has at that instant were continued uniformly for one second, it would pass through in the second. The scientific sense of velocity differs from the popular sense in being applied to all rates of motion, however slow, while the latter implies more or less rapidity or quickness of motion.

Synonyms: Swiftness; celerity; rapidity; fleetness; speed.

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Etymology of 'Velocity'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Velocity" Quotes from Famous Books

... engine. The principal discharge is from an orifice thirty feet broad, opening beneath a ledge of igneous rocks, nearly on a level with the bottom of the ravine. Smoke, steam, and hot water are sent out with incredible velocity for a distance of forty yards, as if from a force pump, with a roar as of a furnace in full blast. The noise is intermittent (although never ceasing entirely) and as regular as respiration. All around are salts, crystallized sulphur, and deposits of clay of every shade. There is no vegetation ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... tiniest rill to the greatest river, are continually engaged in transporting downstream solid particles of rock, the product of weathering agencies in the area which they drain. Since the capacity of a stream to carry matter in suspension is proportional to its velocity, it follows that any circumstance tending to retard the rate of flow will induce deposition. Thus a fall in the gradient at any point in the course of a stream; any snag, projection or dam, impeding the current; the reduced velocity caused by the overflowing of streams in ...

— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... both revolving at the same velocity, the thread was attenuated and twisted as it was carried to the bobbin. This latter was, as already named, driven by the smaller of the two wheels and had a motion all its own, though much quicker than that of the spindle. In ...

— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson

... is said to be direct. This mode of firing is to be preferred when the object fired at is so near that the chances of hitting it are very great, and also when the intervening surface between the gun and object is so rough or irregular that a projectile striking it would have its velocity much diminished or destroyed, and its direction ...

— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... giant's causeway, the latter embedded to the extent of one foot three inches in the sandy beach of Holeopen bay near the old head of Kinsale. Other eyewitnesses depose that they observed an incandescent object of enormous proportions hurtling through the atmosphere at a terrifying velocity in a trajectory directed southwest by west. Messages of condolence and sympathy are being hourly received from all parts of the different continents and the sovereign pontiff has been graciously pleased to decree that a special missa pro defunctis shall be celebrated ...

— Ulysses • James Joyce

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