Word.ws English Dictionary

velociraptor

/vəˌlɒsɪˈɹæptɚ/

velociraptor noun: a small agile dinosaur, of the genus Velociraptor, having sickle-shaped claws. It is also thought to have had a feathered coat. Fossils have been found in Late Cretaceous deposits Mongolia and China (around 75-71 mya).

velociraptor: a small agile dinosaur, of the genus Velociraptor, having sickle-shaped claws. It is also thought...
Image: Eduard Solà Vázquez, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

velociraptor (plural velociraptors)

  1. A small agile dinosaur, of the genus Velociraptor, having sickle-shaped claws. It is also thought to have had a feathered coat. Fossils have been found in Late Cretaceous deposits Mongolia and China (around 75-71 mya).
    • Bipedal hadrosaurs, great hulking lambeosaurs, certain rhino-like ceratopsians and relatives of the velociraptors - all large and probably able swimmers - had the greatest success.2018, Tim Flannery, Europe: A Natural History, page 31
  2. Also Deinonychus.
    • This is my favorite velociraptor, and that is saying a lot....That this species is sunk into Velociraptor is rather unfortunate, because the name Deinonychus Ostrom 1969a is a fine one.1988, Gregory S. Paul, Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Tokyo: Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, pages 366–7
    Synonyms:
    deinonychus

Synonyms of velociraptor

Forms of velociraptor

pluralvelociraptors

Origin of velociraptor

From taxonomic name Velociraptor genus name, from vēlōx (“swift”) + raptor (“thief”). The application to Deinonychus came about because Gregory S. Paul proposed that Velociraptor and Deinonychus were the same genus and this idea was taken up in the book leading to the Jurassic Park film series.

Questions about velociraptor

What does velociraptor mean?
Velociraptor means a small agile dinosaur, of the genus Velociraptor, having sickle-shaped claws. It is also thought to have had a feathered coat. Fossils have been found in Late Cretaceous deposits Mongolia and China (around 75-71 mya).
What part of speech is velociraptor?
Velociraptor is a noun.
How do you pronounce velociraptor?
Velociraptor is pronounced /vəˌlɒsɪˈɹæptɚ/.
What is the plural of velociraptor?
The plural of velociraptor is velociraptors.

Words near velociraptor in the dictionary

  1. velocipedians
  2. velocipedic
  3. velocipeding
  4. velocipedist
  5. velocipedists
  6. velociraptor
  7. velociraptorine
  8. velociraptorines
  9. velociraptors
  10. velocitation
  11. velocities

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: velociraptor (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “velociraptor.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/velociraptor. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.