velarium

American  

[vuh-lair-ee-uhm] / vəˈlɛər i əm /

noun

Roman Antiquity.

plural

velaria

1. an awning drawn over a theater or amphitheater as a protection from rain or the sun.

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velarium British  

/ vɪˈlɛərɪəm /

noun

1. an awning used to protect the audience in ancient Roman theatres and amphitheatres

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Etymology

Origin of velarium

1825–35; < Latin vēlārium (a word known only from a passage in Juvenal; the intended sense may be “curtain” rather than “awning”); see velum, -ary

Example Sentences

In the cloth velarium used by Roman emperors to cover the Colosseum, Stone found his solution to roofing the largest free-span circular building ever erected.

From Time Magazine Archive

It would have been as interesting, perhaps, to have watched him beneath the shade of the velarium pleading the cause of Masintha against the Numidian king.

From Imperial Purple by Saltus, Edgar

At that same moment a resonant manly voice high up under the velarium exclaimed,— "Peace to the martyrs!"

From Quo Vadis: a narrative of the time of Nero by Curtin, Jeremiah

Velum, vē′lum, n. a velarium: the ciliated disc-like fold of the integument with which some embryo molluscs are provided:—pl.

From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 4 of 4: S-Z and supplements) by Various

The mode of arrangements, too, saved the spectators from all the deleterious results of impure air, while the velarium preserved them from the sun.

From The Idler in France by Blessington, Marguerite, Countess of