Is velocity ever a scalar quantity?

[Charles Link]

It may be of interest to the OP that English uses the word velocity to indicate it being a vector and the word speed when referring to the magnitude of the velocity vector. From what I have read, the German language doesn't have the distinction of these two and uses the word Geschwindigkeit for both velocity and speed. They then need to specify whether they are referring to the vector, or its magnitude. In any case, I thought the inputs above were very good, and did a good job explaining how velocity, except when used very loosely, refers to a vector.

Edit: @fresh_42 You have German as your native language= Gibt es nur das einzige Wort Geschwindigkeit? (Is there only the one word Geschwindigkeit?)

 

[Orodruin]

It may be of interest to the OP that English uses the word velocity to indicate it being a vector and the word speed when referring to the magnitude of the velocity vector. From what I have read, the German language doesn't have the distinction of these two and uses the word Geschwindigkeit for both velocity and speed. They then need to specify whether they are referring to the vector, or its magnitude. In any case, I thought the inputs above were very good, and did a good job explaining how velocity, except when used very loosely, refers to a vector.

Interesting. In Swedish we have distinct words: hastighet and fart. Usually words are pretty 1-1-mapped to German …

(We also have a saying that translates funnily to Swenglish:
Det är inte farten som dödar, det är smällen. -> It is not the fart that kills, it is the smäll.
”Smäll” being pronounced as ”smell” and being Swedish for ”impact”)