Pl. velaria. [L. vēlāri-um awning, f. vēlum sail, etc., VELUM.]
1. Rom. Antiq. A large awning used to cover a theater or amphitheater as a protection against sun or rain.
1834. Lytton, Pompeii, V. ii. The obstinate refusal of one part of the velaria to ally itself with the rest.
1836. C. Wordsworth, Athens, xiii. (1855), 76. As if for the insertion of horizontal beams, on which, in the more effeminate times of Athens, a velarium, or awning, was perhaps extended.
1880. L. Wallace, Ben-Hur 267. When he sat under the purple velaria of the Circus Maximus.
transf. 1892. Contemp. Rev., Nov., 681. The great velarium of the pulpit, intended as a sounding board for the preacher’s voice, was spread over the nave like a vast bird.
2. Zool. A thin marginal rim on the bell of certain hydrozoans.
1888. Rolleston & Jackson, Anim. Life, 782. The bell itself is somewhat flattened…. Its margin never becomes inflected inwards: when it is thin and velum-like … it is termed by Haeckel ‘velarium.’
