Venous

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /ˈviː.nəs/

Definitions

1. Relating to or carried by the blood vessels that transport deoxygenated blood back to the heart
2. Pertaining to the system of vessels responsible for returning deoxygenated blood from the body to the heart
3. Connected to the network of blood vessels that convey blood low in oxygen back to the heart

Etymology: "Venous" is one of those adjectives that looks like it should be a simple suffix job, and in part it is: English "vein" plus the adjective ending "-ous," which means "full of" or "having the qualities of." But the stem itself came into English by a different route than the everyday word "vein" did. "Vein" arrived through Old French, while "venous" was taken more directly from Latin "vēnōsus," meaning "full of veins" or "veiny," built from "vēna," the Latin word for a blood vessel. That split explains a curious pair. "Venose," which is a doublet of "venous," comes from the same Latin adjective, and the two words sit side by side in English as two forms of one borrowing. Both describe the same thing, but "venous" has become the standard medical term for the blood vessels that carry blood back toward the heart, while "venose" survives mainly in botanical and entomological writing, where it describes leaves or wings marked with veins.

Synonyms: veinous, vascular, blood-carrying, blood-related, capillary

Antonyms: arterial, nonvascular, tissue-related, muscular, skeletal