lineament

noun

1. Any distinctive shape or line, etc.

   “In consequence, many places never saw an engine or train of unaccustomed hue or lineaments, except on such special occasions as the movement of troops or lines being blocked.”

   “East-trending lineaments, some as long as 400 miles, are clearly discernible on the aeromagnetic maps. These lineaments may be associated with large fractures in the earth's crust.”

   “The presence of lineaments is significant in site evaluation for waste disposal, because some lineaments may be faults or fracture zones with the potential to be ground-water conductors.”

2. A distinctive feature that characterizes something, especially the parts of a person’s face.

   “Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of Nature.”

   “[…] onely remember, that so soone as thy eyelids be unglewd, thy first exercise must be (either sitting upright on thy pillow, or rarely loling at thy bodies whole length) to yawne, to stretch, and to gape wider then any oyster-wife : for thereby thou doest not onely send out the lively spirits (like vaunt-curers) to fortifie and make good the uttermost borders of the body ; but also (as a cunning painter) thy goodly lineaments are drawne out in their fairest proportion.”

   “VVho is this vve muſt learn, for man he ſeems / In all his lineaments, though in his face / The glimpſes of his Fathers glory ſhine.”

   “[…] a mask of iron on his face hid the lineaments / Of ancient Kings, and the frown of the eternal lion was hid from the oppressed earth.”

   “But she could not wipe out the king's majesty with that sponge nor alter one lineament of the portrait she had taken ten years to limn.”