velella
noun
velella is a noun meaning “Velella velella, a free-floating marine protozoan of the monospecific genus Velella” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-E-L-E-L-L-A, and it appears about once in every 48 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of velella is velellas.
What does velella mean?
noun
- 1
Velella velella, a free-floating marine protozoan of the monospecific genus Velella.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of velella
- velellas plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is velella?
Velella appears about once in every 48 million words in written English, the 214,628th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Velella in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense a free-floating marine organism similar to a small jellyfish:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | vélelle, barque de la Saint-Jean (Biarritz) |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does velella come from?
From the genus name.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).