**Velar** is a word from phonetics — the study of speech sounds. A velar sound is one you make by lifting the **back** of your tongue up to touch, or nearly touch, the soft part at the back of the roof of your mouth. That soft part is called the *soft palate*, or by its Latin name, the **velum**.

Try it: say **k** and **g**. Feel where the block happens — it is far back, and it is the back of your tongue doing the work, not the tip. Those are English's two main velar sounds. The third is the **ng** sound at the end of *sing* and *long* (written /ŋ/), which is a nasal velar — same place, but the air goes out through your nose.

So in English the velars are: /k/ (cat, back), /g/ (go, bag), /ŋ/ (sing).

The word works two ways:

- as an **adjective**: *a velar consonant*, *velar articulation*, *the velar nasal*.

- as a **noun**: *"/k/ and /g/ are velars."* Phonetics people use it this way all the time.

Register: this is a technical term. It lives in linguistics classes, dictionaries, pronunciation guides, and speech therapy — nowhere else. Ordinary English speakers have never heard it and will not know what you mean.

Why learn it? Because if you are studying pronunciation, the vocabulary of *where in the mouth* — labial (lips), dental (teeth), alveolar (the ridge behind the teeth), palatal (hard roof), velar (soft back) — lets you talk about your own mouth precisely instead of guessing.