noun

• (rare, countable) A female chinchilla; a sow.
• (slang, uncountable) The drug dextromethorphan.
• (slang, uncountable) Money acquired by gambling.

verb

• (cooking) To coat raw meat in starch, then in oil, preparatory to frying.
  "Blanching cut and specially marinated chicken in oil or water prior to stir-frying is a technique common to Chinese restaurant kitchens. The 20-second bath tenderizes the chicken remarkably, hence the process has been dubbed "velveting" in English. Velveted chicken is half-cooked, will not stick to the pan, and needs almost no oil when stir-fried."
• (figurative, transitive) To soften; to mitigate.
  "She spoke very gently, full of compassion for the boy, velveting her reproach for me."
• (of a cat's claws) to retract.

adj

• (politics) Peaceful; carried out without violence; especially as pertaining to the peaceful breakup of Czechoslovakia.
  "What at the time of the initial agreement of Yeltsin, Shushkevich and Kravchuk to join together in a new 'Commonwealth of Independent States' had seemed like a reconstitution of the lands of ancient Rus, quickly turned out to be, in the words of the leading Russian-Ukrainian reformer Aleksandr Tsipko, merely a 'velvet disintegration'."