steinige

Steinige is a German adjective meaning “stony” or “rocky.” It is used to describe surfaces, soils, or landscapes that contain a notable amount of stones or rock fragments. In standard usage, steinig denotes texture or composition related to stone, and steinige is the common attributive form before feminine singular nouns, as in eine steinige Straße or die steinige Landschaft.

German adjectives decline according to gender, number, and case, so steinige appears in other configurations as well (for example, der steinige Boden, die steinigen Wege, die steinige Fläche). When used without a descriptive article or in plural bare form, the adjective takes endings consistent with the broader declension rules, yielding phrases such as steinige Wege or steinige Böden.

The term is frequently found in geography, geology, and landscape descriptions, where it signals rough, uneven, or rubble-strewn terrain. It can be used metaphorically to suggest obstacles or difficulty, as in figurative phrases describing “steinige” paths through a situation.

Etymology traces steinige to Stein (stone) plus the adjectival suffix -ig, forming a word that conveys texture or composition related to stone. Related German terms include felsig (rocky or craggy) and steinhaltig (stone-containing or stony in character). Steinige thus functions as a concise descriptor in descriptive writing about landforms, surfaces, and soils.