veins

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of vein.

   Surgeons must avoid damaging the major veins during the operation.

   Thin veins of quartz threaded through the gray rock.

   Note

   One plural serves a whole family of branching lines: blood vessels, the ribs of a leaf, the nervures of an insect's wing, streaks running through marble, wood or cheese, and sheets of crystallized minerals in rock. In the kitchen the plural is the natural form, because a shrimp's veins are its entrails. The same spelling also belongs to the verb for marking with veins, so context tells you which you are reading.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of vein.

   The craftsman veins the fresh plaster to imitate real marble.

   Frost veins the windowpane with delicate white patterns overnight.

   Note

   A verb of craft and description rather than anatomy. It always takes an object, the surface being marked, and it often adds a with-phrase naming the pattern left behind, as in frost veins the glass with white lines. A painter imitating marble on plaster and weather etching a windowpane both fit it, since what it describes is a pattern that only looks like veins.

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