vlei
/fleɪ/noun
vlei is a noun meaning “A shallow wetland or minor lake, generally a seasonal one, or the lowland where such a wetland appears seasonally” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-L-E-I, and it appears about once in every 30 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of vlei is vleis.
What does vlei mean?
noun
- 1
A shallow wetland or minor lake, generally a seasonal one, or the lowland where such a wetland appears seasonally.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce vlei?
- /fleɪ/
- /fliː/
- UK /fleɪ/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of vlei
- vleis plural
- vley
- vly
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is vlei?
Vlei appears about once in every 30 million words in written English, the 167,786th 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).
Where does vlei come from?
From Afrikaans vlei, from Dutch vallei (“valley”). Doublet of valley and vly.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).