vlei
UK/fleɪ/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
General South African/fleɪ/
vlei noun: a shallow wetland or minor lake, generally a seasonal one, or the lowland where such a wetland appears seasonally.
Noun
vlei (plural vleis)
- A shallow wetland or minor lake, generally a seasonal one, or the lowland where such a wetland appears seasonally.
- The country thereabout was a succession of vleys or gulleys, then filled with excellent clear water, teeming with water-fowl.1861, Charles John Andersson, Lake Ngami, chapter XXV, page 301
- She remembered the pleasurable warm smell of the cow droppings […] as if the four-divided stomachs of the great oxen were filled with nothing but concentrated memories of hours of grazing along the water heavy vleis.1952, Doris Lessing, Martha Quest, Panther, published 1974, page 59
Forms of vlei
| plural | vleis |
|---|---|
| alternative form | vley |
| alternative form | vly |
Origin of vlei
From Afrikaans vlei, from Dutch vallei (“valley”). Doublet of valley and vly.
Words formed from vlei
Phrases with vlei
Questions about vlei
- What does vlei mean?
- Vlei means a shallow wetland or minor lake, generally a seasonal one, or the lowland where such a wetland appears seasonally.
- What part of speech is vlei?
- Vlei is a noun.
- How do you pronounce vlei?
- Vlei is pronounced /fleɪ/ (General South African).
- What is the plural of vlei?
- The plural of vlei is vleis.
Words near vlei in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: vlei (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: “vlei.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/vlei. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.