veld, noun
- Origin:
- DutchShow more Dutch veld (formerly also written veldt) field, battle-field.
1. noncount. obsolete. The area or (collectively) areas in which military operations are taking place, ‘the field’; rare except in combination, as in the former military and civil titles of persons who, while not necessarily permanent soldiers, were officers-designate, holding positions of authority in the field in times of war, and carrying out certain administrative duties in peacetime: see veld commandant, veld cornet, veld-corporal (see sense 5), veld-kornet, veldwagtmeester.
α.
1785 [see veld-corporal at sense 5].
1902 D. Van Warmelo On Commando 171There was not much left to commandeer, unless we deprived the women whose husbands were in the veld of the necessities of life.
2. Open, undeveloped countryside.
a.
i. noncount. Uncultivated and undeveloped land with relatively open natural vegetation, especially open grassland or scrubland, but ranging from semi-desert terrain to savannah in which grass and scrub are closely interspersed with trees; field sense 1. See also bush noun1 sense 3.
α.
1835 A. Steedman Wanderings I. 71We reached Fort Wiltshire late in the evening and..retired to rest with very different feelings from those which we had entertained the previous evening in the Veld.
β.
1802 Truter & Somerville in G.M. Theal Rec. of Cape Col. (1899) IV. 397He was of the opinion that..the veldt between this and Roggeveld and the fountains were too dry..for the number of cattle of the expedition, and before we had copious rains there could not be sufficient water in that veldt.
1990 R. Gool Cape Town Coolie 165Valleys of rolling caneland.., knolls of dry open veldt with aloes, wattles, and thorntrees bristling above dense nests of subtropical jungle.
ii. rare. plural veldte, veldts /-ə/. A piece or stretch of uncultivated land; an enclosed but uncultivated field.
α.
1990 G. Slovo Ties of Blood 81They’d stood in the midst of an open veld and looked at the land which was once theirs.
β.
1900 H. Butterworth Trav. Tales 15They wished to know about the great valleys, or veldts, that they expected to visit.
b. Attributive, as veld fire (cf. bushfire, see bush noun1 sense 1 b), veld flower, veld grass, veld koppie.
α.
1882 C. Du Val With Show through Sn Afr. I. 62In certain seasons..the ‘Veld’ flowers in countless numbers burst into bloom, and substitute for their lack of perfume the richness of their variegated hues.
1992 T. Van Rensburg in S. Afr. Panorama Mar.–Apr. 14Fynbos products such as..veld flowers and thatching-reed are harvested.
β.
1976 N. Ashford in J. Crwys-Williams S. Afr. Despatches (1989) 414Violence and rioting spread across the Rand like a veldt fire today.
c. With distinguishing epithet, denoting a characteristic feature of an area (such as a common animal species, altitude, etc.): see Agterveld, backveld, Bokkeveld, highveld, Hooge Veld, lowveld, middleveld.
d. In the phr. veld and vlei verse, see quotation 1986.
α.
1986 D. Adey et al. Companion to S. Afr. Eng. Lit. 204Veld and vlei verse, A derogatory appellation for a considerable quantity of nineteenth (and early twentieth century) SA verse, the subject of which is the veld — usually evoked in sentimental Victorian-romantic rhythms and tones. Roy Campbell bitingly satirized the tendency of so many colonial poetasters to hymn the mystery of the wide outdoors in his poem ‘A Veld Eclogue: The Pioneers’.
1991 M. Chapman in Embambiswaneni No.10, 72A late 19th Century South African tradition of what he (sc. Roy Campbell) scornfully called ‘veld and vlei’ verse (that is, sentimental hymns to the mystery of the veld).
3. noncount.
a. Natural uncultivated vegetation used as pasture; the vegetation (as described at sense 2 a i) on such land. See also veld camp at sense 5.
α.
1850 J.D. Lewins Diary. 1 Mar.No lambs in velt.
1993 J. Thomas in House & Leisure Nov. 50The veld was hacked into bristly fairways, with odd little patches of kikuyu greens hosting embedded jam tins.
β.
1876 T. Stubbs Reminiscences. I. 91As the Veldt was completely done, they asked me to help them to remove to another farm.
1903 E.F. Knight S. Afr. after War 37These great trekking flocks and herds coming through their farms were eating up all their veldt.
b. Attributive, as veld green, veld management, veld rehabilitation, veld-type.
α.
1965 Farmer’s Weekly 8 Dec. 8Child of poor veld management, bitterbush is also the forerunner of approaching desert.
c. An element in the names of terrain types, with distinguishing epithet denoting the dominant soil or plant type, or a characteristic of the vegetation: see bontveld, bosveld, bushveld, gebroken veld, grassveld, hard veld, mixed veld, renosterveld, sandveld, sourveld (sour sense 2), strandveld, sweetveld (sweet sense 2), thornveld, zuurveld.
4. noncount, transferred sense ‘The country’, rural areas or rural society, with characteristic atmosphere and lifestyle. Also combinations veld-bred, and (nonce) veld-tipped adjectives, and figurative. See also backveld noun sense a.
5. combinations
veld burning verbal noun phrase, the setting of controlled fires in the veld to encourage new plant growth, or to kill off unwanted species; see also burn;
veld camp [see camp noun2 sense b], an area of natural vegetation enclosed as pasture; see also sense 3 a above;
veld-craft, practically useful knowledge of the veld, applied in such areas as path-finding, the use of plants, the tracking of animals, and the exploitation of terrain to one’s advantage in warfare;
veldkool /-kʊəl/, also veldskool [Afrikaans, from Dutch kool cabbage], any of several species of edible wild plant; hotnotskool, see Hotnot sense 4; see also Hottentot’s cabbage (Hottentot noun sense 6 a);
veld management, the controlled use of veld in order to prevent its deterioriation through overgrazing, the encroachment of exotic plant species, or other cause;
veld school, a camp for children held in the veld and including lectures and practical instruction on nature conservation and other topics (alleged by some to have been used by the National Party government for purposes of political indoctrination);
veld sickness Pathology, a potentially fatal disease of livestock resulting from malnutrition, and occurring particularly when animals raised in a sweetveld area are moved to sourveld pastures;
veldman, veldsman /-man/ [Afrikaans], a person knowledgeable in veld-craft (see above) or delighting in life in the veld;
veld sore Pathology, an ulcerous skin eruption apparently caused or aggravated by dietary deficiencies and dry, dusty climatic conditions; cf. Natal sore (see Natal sense a).
1856 R.E.E. Wilmot Diary (1984) 39Near Grahamstown, at a veld burning, I saw full 300 [locust birds] in attendance on the flames.
1981 Daily Dispatch 12 Aug. 10Dr Wollheim..found himself teaching in schools for underprivileged children: ‘I found I could not teach children with caries..and veld sores.’
The area or (collectively) areas in which military operations are taking place, ‘the field’; rare except in combination, as in the former military and civil titles of persons who, while not necessarily permanent soldiers, were officers-designate, holding positions of authority in the field in times of war, and carrying out certain administrative duties in peacetime: see veld commandant, veld cornet, veld-corporal (see sense 5), veld-kornet, veldwagtmeester.
Open, undeveloped countryside.
Uncultivated and undeveloped land with relatively open natural vegetation, especially open grassland or scrubland, but ranging from semi-desert terrain to savannah in which grass and scrub are closely interspersed with trees; field sense 1.
A piece or stretch of uncultivated land; an enclosed but uncultivated field.
Natural uncultivated vegetation used as pasture; the vegetation (as described at sense 2 a i) on such land.
An element in the names of terrain types, with distinguishing epithet denoting the dominant soil or plant type, or a characteristic of the vegetation: see bontveld, bosveld, bushveld, gebroken veld, grassveld, hard veld, mixed veld, renosterveld, sandveld, sourveld (sour sense 2), strandveld, sweetveld (sweet sense 2), thornveld, zuurveld.
Copyright © 2023 Dictionary Unit for South African English.