• enPR: vān, IPA: /veɪn/

vein (plural veins)

1. (anatomy) A blood vessel that transports blood from the capillaries back to the heart.
2. (in plural) The entrails of a shrimp.
3. (botany) In leaves, a thickened portion of the leaf containing the vascular bundle.
4. (zoology) The nervure of an insect’s wing.
5. A stripe or streak of a different colour or composition in materials such as wood, cheese, marble or other rocks.
   1. (geology) A sheetlike body of crystallized minerals within a rock.
6. (figurative) A topic of discussion; a train of association, thoughts, emotions, etc.

   in the same vein

   • RQ

     He […] is able to open new scenes, and discover a vein of true and noble thinking.

7. (figurative) A style, tendency, or quality.

   The play is in a satirical vein.

   • 1625, Francis Bacon, Of Truth

     certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins

   • Invoke the Muses, and improve my vein.

8. A fissure, cleft or cavity, as in the earth or other substance.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book 10”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554 ↗:

     down to the veins of earth

   • Let the glass of the prisms be free from veins.

• in the same vein
• veined
• veinless
• veinlet
• veinlike
• veinstone
• veiny
• venation
• venous
• blue-veined cheese
• deep vein thrombosis
• pulmonary vein
• varicose vein

• French: veine
• German: Vene, Ader, Geäder (collective)
• Italian: vena
• Portuguese: veia
• Russian: ве́на
• Spanish: vena

• Italian: venatura
• Portuguese: nervura
• Russian: жи́лка
• Spanish: vena

• Russian: жи́лка
• Spanish: vena

• German: Ader, Goldader (gold)
• Portuguese: veio
• Russian: прожи́лка
• Spanish: vena

vein (veins, present participle veining; past and past participle veined)

1. To mark with veins or a vein-like pattern.
   • 1853, Henry William Herbert, The Roman Traitor, Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson, Volume II, Chapter 18, p. 204,

     […] as he ceased from that wild imprecation, a faint flash of lightning veined the remote horizon, and a low clap of thunder rumbled afar off, echoing among the hills […]

   • 1920, Melville Davisson Post, The Sleuth of St. James’s Square, Chapter 14,

     “We brought out our maps of the region and showed him the old routes and trails veining the whole of it. […] ”