Word.ws English Dictionary

welt

/wɛlt/

welt verb: to roll; revolve.

Verb (1)

welt (third-person singular simple present welts, present participle welting, simple past and past participle welted)

  1. (intransitive, obsolete) To roll; revolve.

Noun

welt (plural welts)

  1. A ridge or lump on the skin, as caused by a blow or insect bite.
    • When she saw, on the back and shoulders of the child, great welts and calloused spots, ineffaceable marks of the system under which she had grown up thus far, her heart became pitiful within her.1851 June – 1852 April, Harriet Beecher Stowe, chapter XX, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, volume II, Boston, Mass.: John P[unchard] Jewett & Company; Cleveland, Oh.: Jewett, Proctor...
    • […] I am sure of one thing,—scars are plenty enough in Germany, among the young men; and very grim ones they are, too. They criss-cross the face in angry red welts, and are permanent and ineffaceable.1880, Mark Twain [pseudonym] (Samuel L[anghorne] Clemens), chapter VII, in A Tramp Abroad; […], Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company; London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC, pages 64–65
    Synonyms:
    wheal, weal
  2. A strip, especially one around the edge of something (for example, in some old heraldry).
    • … round about a border of Purple Veluet, with Floure de luces of Gold, embrodred to the full, with a welt and bordure of Ermines foure fingers broad. / Vpon the last named cloath or Couerlet of St / …1623, André Favyn, The theater of honour and knight-hood […], book 10
    • Therefore this may be taken for an Observation, that an edg, or hem, or welt, only runs on the sides of the Ordinary; but the Border invirons, or goeth clear round the same, […]1688, Randle Holme, The academy of armory, book 1, chapter IV, "Of the Bend divers ways"
    1. (shoemaking) A strip of leather set into the seam between the outsole of a shoe and the upper, through which these parts are joined by stitching or stapling.
    2. A strip of material or covered cord applied to a seam or garment edge to strengthen or cover it.
      • [The] Mantle of this Order was of Skie-coloured Damask, having broad welt of Gold embroidered on the Collar, and [...]1672, Elias Ashmole, The institution, laws & ceremonies of the most noble Order of the Garter, chapter III, section 1
      • […] surmounted of another Azure: but in my Judgment, it rather represents a Hem, or Welt of a Belt, or an Edg of Silver, than two Belts one upon another; which the Bend properly signifie […]1688, Randle Holme, The academy of armory, book 1, chapter IV, "Of the Bend divers ways"
    3. In steam boilers and sheet-iron work, a strip riveted upon the edges of plates that form a butt joint.
    4. In carpentry, a strip of wood fastened over a flush seam or joint, or an angle, to strengthen it.
    5. In machine-made stockings, a strip, or flap, of which the heel is formed.
  3. (obsolete, shoemaking) A shoe made with a welt (strip of leather set into the seam).
    • Previous to the fifties, most of the shoes made were welts, or spring heels, and later most of the work changed to turns or "runrounds" as they were called.1912, The Register of the Lynn Historical Society
    • Nathan D. Chase, a well-to-do boss who accumulated enough wealth to retire in 1850 at middle age, observed that the prices for making shoes remained low from 1837 to 1842: 4 cents for red-bottomed cacks, 8 cents for women's turned slippers, 10 cents for thick-heeled runrounds, 12 cents for set...1981, Paul Gustaf Faler, Mechanics and Manufacturers in the Early Industrial Revolution, page 91

Verb (2)

welt (third-person singular simple present welts, present participle welting, simple past and past participle welted)

  1. (transitive) To cause to have welts; to beat.
    • Well, gentlemen, I was standing with her just inside the window, in all innocence, as God is my judge, when he rushed like a madman into the room, called her the vilest name that a man could use to a woman, and welted her across the face with the stick he had in his hand.1904 September, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange”, in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, New York, N.Y.: McClure, Phillips & Co., published February 1905, →OCLC
    • "Cover your scut, or I'll welt the skin off it."1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 113
  2. (transitive) To install welt (a welt or welts) to reinforce.

Verb (3)

welt (third-person singular simple present welts, present participle welting, simple past and past participle welted)

  1. (UK, archaic, dialectal, intransitive) To decay.
  2. (UK, archaic, dialectal, intransitive) To become stringy.

Proper noun capitalized: Welt

Welt (plural Welts)

  1. A surname from German.

welt meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Kannada and Tagalog

welt in Tamil

விளிம்புவலுப்பட்டி, வீக்கு

welt in Urdu

چمڑے کی پٹی, نواڑ, سوکھنا, مرجھانا

welt in Kannada

ಬಾಸುಂಡೆ, ಕರೆ, ಊತ, ಬಾವು

welt in Tagalog

raised mark on the body
pantal, pamamantal
More languagesFewer languages
welt in Vietnamese
lằn roi, lằn, đánh nổi lằn

Examples of welt in a sentence

  • She was nearly four feet long, with a large welt on her shell, which was encrusted with ancient-looking barnacles.2014, Elizabeth Kolbert, chapter 7, in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Henry Holt and Company:
  • The area is wide and bright, a grid of small streets crisscrossed with boulevards and the welt of the I-10 freeway running along its southern edge.”2018, Susan Orlean, chapter 6, in The Library Book:

All 12 example sentences with welt

Synonyms of welt

Forms of welt

Verb
third-person singular presentwelts
present participlewelting
past participlewelted
pastwelted
Noun
pluralwelts
Proper noun
pluralWelts

Plural of welt: welts

Origin of welt

From Middle English welten, from Old English weltan, wieltan, from Proto-Germanic *waltijaną, from Proto-Indo-European *wel- (“to turn; wind; twist”). Cognate with German wälzen, Danish vælte, Swedish välta, Icelandic velta.

First use appears c. 1425, a shoemaker's term. Perhaps related to Middle English welten (“to overturn, roll over”), from Old Norse velta (“to roll”). Meaning "ridge on the skin from a wound" first recorded 1800.

Borrowed from German Welt.

Words formed from welt

Words that rhyme with welt

12 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about welt

What does welt mean?
Welt means to roll; revolve.
What is welt in Tamil?
Welt in Tamil is விளிம்புவலுப்பட்டி, வீக்கு. See Welt meaning in Tamil.
How do you use welt in a sentence?
She was nearly four feet long, with a large welt on her shell, which was encrusted with ancient-looking barnacles.
What part of speech is welt?
Welt can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce welt?
Welt is pronounced /wɛlt/.
What is the past tense of welt?
The past tense of welt is welted.

Words near welt in the dictionary

  1. Welshry
  2. Welshwoman
  3. Welshwomen
  4. Welshy
  5. welsium
  6. welt
  7. weltanschauung
  8. weltanschauungen
  9. weltanschauungs
  10. Weltansicht
  11. Weltansichts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: welt (page history and authors); Welt (page history and authors); welt (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); welt (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); welt (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-welt.wav.

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