adumbrate
Americanverb (used with object)
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to produce a faint image or resemblance of; to outline or sketch.
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to foreshadow; prefigure.
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to darken or conceal partially; overshadow.
verb
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to outline; give a faint indication of
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to foreshadow
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to overshadow; obscure
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of adumbrate
First recorded in 1575–85; from Latin adumbrātus “shaded,” past participle of adumbrāre “to shade,” from ad- ad- + umbr(a) “shade, shadow” + -āre, infinitive verb suffix
Explanation
To adumbrate something is to outline it. In an English essay, you could adumbrate the themes in a novel; or, in a letter to Santa, you could adumbrate all the ways you have been behaving. Adumbrate is built on the Latin root umbra, "shade," and the image it evokes is of a shadow being cast around something. Your outline is like a shadow of something bigger — like the themes in that novel or the ways you have been behaving. You can also use adumbrate to mean "foreshadow": "The scene where the princess dreams of the vampire adumbrates her later discovery that her little brother is, in fact, a vampire."
Vocabulary lists containing adumbrate
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
His photographs have used a variety of techniques to adumbrate this world.
From New York Times • Aug. 10, 2017
Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian But as soon as you adumbrate thus, you are beset with misgivings.
From The Guardian • Apr. 19, 2016
Together with the bare facts of the retreat at Walden, those lines have become the ones by which we adumbrate Thoreau, so that our image of the man has also become simplified and inspirational.
From The New Yorker • Oct. 19, 2015
By week's end, with Laval's return from Paris, Vichy began, if not to explain, at least to adumbrate.
From Time Magazine Archive
If all rites, then our holidays among the rest, serve only to adumbrate and shadow forth something, and by consequence are unprofitable and idle, when the substance itself is clearly set before us.
From The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) by Gillespie, George
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
