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Oct 1, 2026
This week’s themeA change of character: Act I This week’s words androgynous casque venous 
Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time, c. 1545
Venus takes center stage, while Father Time (top right) lends a visibly venous hand Art: Agnolo Bronzino Wordsmith Games
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Gargvenous
PRONUNCIATION:
(VEE-nuhs)
MEANING:
adjective: Relating to veins.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin vena (vein). Earliest documented use: 1626.
NOTES:
The usage example below describes Marlene Dumas’s painting The Painter
(1994), based on a photograph of her daughter after finger painting.
Venous blood is dark red, not blue; veins can appear blue through skin
because of how light interacts with tissue.
USAGE:
“Her hands are stained up to the wrist -- her left hand carmine red, the
right venous blue -- and you cannot be sure whether she has spent the
previous few minutes finger painting in the playroom or dousing her hands
in blood.” Deborah Solomon; Figuring Marlene Dumas; The New York Times Magazine; Jun 15, 2008. See more usage examples of venous in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous.
In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person with solid virtues
who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knownness
often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the
honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized
jobs. -Daniel J Boorstin, historian, professor, attorney, and writer (1 Oct
1914-2004)
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