Vein

How to spell vein

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce vein

What does vein mean?

1. nounA blood vessel that carries blood back towards the heart.
2. nounA distinct streak of mineral or ore running through surrounding rock.
3. nounOne of the thin tubes forming the framework of a leaf or insect wing.
4. nounA particular style, tone, or mood in which something is done or expressed.

Vein in a sentence

• The nurse struggled to find a suitable vein for the blood test.

• The prospectors traced a vein of gold deep into the hillside.

• Each vein in the leaf carried water out to the edges.

• The rest of the report continued in the same critical vein.

• A large vein stood out on the back of his hand.

• A thin vein of quartz ran across the cliff face.

Where does vein come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Latin vena, which meant a blood vessel and, by extension, any natural channel that something flows through. English took it in during the 1300s by way of Old French veine, keeping both the literal anatomical sense and the figurative one. Even in Latin the word already stretched beyond the body: miners spoke of a vena of metal running through rock, exactly as English speakers still talk about a vein of ore. The spelling trap is the 'ei', which English preserved from the French form rather than spelling it phonetically, and it is what separates vein from its sound-alikes vain (proud) and vane (a weather pointer). The same Latin root survives in the medical words 'venous' and 'intravenous', a useful reminder that vein keeps the 'e' before the 'i'.

How the word is built

• vein (from Latin vena: blood vessel, channel); a single unanalysable root with no prefix or suffix

Words that sound like vein

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• vain: Producing no result; useless or futile, especially in the phrase 'in vain'.