**Veined** describes a surface that has thin lines running across it, branching out like the veins in your arm or the lines in a leaf. It is a describing word for how something *looks*. Where you meet it most: - **stone**, especially marble. White marble with grey lines through it is *veined with grey*. This is the single most common use — kitchen counters, floors, sculpture. - **leaves** and **wings** — a leaf is veined, a dragonfly's wing is veined. - **hands, arms, skin** — usually of an older person or a very muscular one, where the blood vessels show through. Saying someone's hands are *veined* is a gentle, slightly literary way of saying they look old or worked-hard. - **wood, cheese (blue cheese is veined with blue mould), rock with metal in it.** The usual pattern is **veined with + colour or material**: *veined with gold*, *veined with blue*, *veined with red*. You can also just say *a veined leaf* on its own. Register: this word belongs to careful, descriptive writing — novels, art and design talk, catalogues of building materials. In everyday speech people say "it has lines in it" or "it's got stripes." So when you use *veined*, you are picking a picture-making word, and it always sounds a bit artistic. One useful nuance: *veined* lines are **irregular and branching**, not straight and even. Something with neat parallel lines is *striped*, not veined. That branching, river-like quality is the whole feeling of the word.