A word you put in front of a noun to say: I am about to use a strong or surprising word for this thing, and yes, I mean it. 'The garden was a veritable jungle.' The garden is not really a jungle — but the speaker wants you to feel that 'jungle' is fair, not an exaggeration. So it works almost like an underline. It very nearly always comes before a noun (you cannot say 'the jungle was veritable'), and the noun is nearly always a big, colourful, slightly over-the-top one: a veritable feast, a veritable army of children, a veritable treasure trove, a veritable flood of complaints. Here is the interesting part. The word literally means 'true, real', and centuries ago that is how it was used plainly. Today the plain meaning is mostly gone, and what is left is the flavour: a bit old-fashioned, a bit literary, often playful or gently joking. Newspapers and food writers love it. When a friend says 'she made a veritable banquet', they are half praising the food and half laughing at themselves for using such a grand word. Because of this, using it about something small or dull sounds odd — the noun after it has to be worth the fuss.