vein

Pluralveins

Formsveins, veining, veined

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A blood vessel that returns blood from the capillaries to the heart.

   The surgeons carefully avoided the large vein during the operation.

   The veins in her hands stood out after the workout.

   Oppositeartery

   Note

   The anatomical sense comes from Middle English veyne, through Anglo-Norman from Latin vēna. It displaced the native Old English ǣdre, whence edder. Veins work at low pressure, and in the limbs they carry valves that stop blood from flowing backward. Most carry deoxygenated blood, though the pulmonary veins are the exception. Marlowe, in Tamburlaine the Great, still spells it vaine and pairs it with artier.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   In wood, cheese, marble, or other rock, a streak or band that differs in color or composition from the material around it.

   A dark vein of mineral wound through the polished granite.

   The aged cheese was shot through with greenish veins.

   Similarstreak, stripe, seam, line

3. 3
   nounfigurativelycountable

   A style, tendency, or quality, especially one that runs consistently through a work or conversation.

   His remarks struck a more serious vein than usual.

   The novel's later chapters shift into a melancholy vein.

   Similartone, mood, note, manner, style

   Note

   Where the "train of thought" meaning concerns what is being said, this one concerns how it is said. It typically follows in plus an adjective of tone: in a satirical vein, in a lighter vein. Earlier writers also used it for a person's natural bent or gift. Edmund Waller in 1645 begs the Muses to "improve my vein," and Bacon writes of wits "of the same veins."

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A sheetlike mass of crystallized minerals occurring within a rock.

   Prospectors traced the silver vein along the canyon wall.

   Hydrothermal veins often contain valuable ore minerals.

   Similarlode, seam, reef

   Note

   A geologist's vein is a filling, not merely a streak. It forms when minerals are deposited inside a fracture or fault, usually precipitated from hot, mineral-rich fluids moving through the crust. Many veins host metallic ore, which is why prospectors trace them. Keep it distinct from the "fissure" sense, where the vein is the crack itself rather than what crystallized inside it.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A thickened portion of a leaf that contains the vascular bundle.

   The central vein of the leaf is called the midrib.

   Parallel veins run the length of grass blades.

   Similarrib, nervure

   Note

   Botany borrows the circulatory picture. A leaf's veins are its plumbing: strands of xylem and phloem that carry water and dissolved minerals in and the products of photosynthesis out. They also do structural work, stiffening the thin blade the way ribs hold up a fan. The large central vein has its own name, the midrib.

6. 6
   nounfigurativelycountable

   A topic of discussion, or a train of associated thoughts, feelings, and ideas.

   The conversation gradually drifted into a more personal vein.

   Once she got onto that vein, the old memories kept coming.

   Similartrack, line, topic

   Note

   The figure is of something running unbroken through a larger body, the way a train of thought runs through talk. Its fixed phrase is in the same vein, meaning "continuing on the same subject or mood." Swift writes of discovering "a vein of true and noble thinking." Matt Bellamy's "Knights of Cydonia" (2006) pulls it back toward the blood by giving the past veins of its own.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   One of the rib-like structures, or nervures, that support and stiffen an insect's wing.

   Entomologists identify many species by the arrangement of the wing veins.

   A single vein runs along the leading edge of the wing.

   Similarnervure, rib

   Note

   Entomology's counterpart to the leaf vein is a chitinous, often hollow tube branching through the wing membrane. It keeps the wing rigid, and in many orders it also carries tracheae and nerves. Nervure names the same structure. Because the branching pattern is a key taxonomic character, wing veins are among the first things an entomologist checks when identifying a species.

8. 8
   nouncountable

   An opening such as a crack, cleft, or cavity that runs through the earth or through some other substance.

   A deep vein in the cliff face channeled rainwater underground.

   Cold drafts rose from veins in the cavern floor.

   Similarfissure, crack, cleft, crevice

   Note

   Here the vein is the gap itself rather than anything that fills it. Milton reaches "down to the veins of earth" in Paradise Lost (1667). Newton, in Opticks (1704), picks a prism "free from Veins," meaning flaws running through the glass. That shows the sense extended beyond earth and rock to any substance a cleft or flaw can run through.

9. 9
   verbtransitive

   To cover or streak something with veins or with lines resembling them.

   Streaks of red wine veined the white tablecloth.

   Bolts of lightning seemed to vein the dark sky.

   Similarstreak, marble, stripe, thread

   Note

   The verb is most vivid when it describes lines spreading across a surface. In Henry William Herbert's The Roman Traitor (1853), lightning "veined the remote horizon." In Melville Davisson Post's The Sleuth of St. James's Square (1920), old routes and trails are "veining the whole" of a region. It is regular, with veined serving as both past tense and past participle.

10. 10
    nouncountableplural

    The intestinal tract, or entrails, of a shrimp.

    Pull the vein from the back of each shrimp before grilling.

    Properly cleaned shrimp have had their veins removed.

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