adumbrate

American  

[a-duhm-brayt, ad-uhm-brayt] / æˈdʌm breɪt, ˈæd əmˌbreɪt /

verb (used with object)

• adumbrates,
  present (3rd person singular)
• adumbrated,
  past participle,  past
• adumbrating
  present participle

1. to produce a faint image or resemblance of; to outline or sketch.

2. to foreshadow; prefigure.

3. to darken or conceal partially; overshadow.

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adumbrate British  

/ ˈædʌmˌbreɪt /

verb

1. to outline; give a faint indication of

2. to foreshadow

3. to overshadow; obscure

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• adumbration
  noun
• adumbrative
  adjective
• adumbratively
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Participles

• adumbrating
  present
• adumbrated
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• adumbrate
  simple
• adumbrates
  simple
• have adumbrated
  perfect
• has adumbrated
  perfect
• am adumbrating
  progressive
• are adumbrating
  progressive
• is adumbrating
  progressive
• have been adumbrating
  perfect progressive
• has been adumbrating
  perfect progressive

Past

• adumbrated
  simple
• had adumbrated
  perfect
• was adumbrating
  progressive
• were adumbrating
  progressive
• had been adumbrating
  perfect progressive

Future

• will adumbrate
  simple
• will have adumbrated
  perfect
• will be adumbrating
  progressive
• will have been adumbrating
  perfect progressive

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."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

adumbrate adumbrates adumbrated adumbrating

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

The choice of adverb is peculiarly pregnant, contriving as it does simultaneously to affirm faith and to adumbrate doubt.

From Time Magazine Archive

But since this picture has to set forth mysteries seen and heard by none, the revelation itself, like S. John's Apocalypse, is conveyed in symbols fashioned to adumbrate the truths perceived by faith.

From Renaissance in Italy: Italian Literature Part 1 (of 2) by John Addington Symonds

More than any juice cleanse or lottery win or career switch, a foreign language adumbrates a vision of a parallel life.

From The New Yorker ● Aug. 1, 2016

But they furnish such extensive extracts from diaries and letters, as well as such detailed ''work histories'' of the compositions, that their valuable book adumbrates the shape of many biographies and studies to come.

From Time Magazine Archive

Very many things could be regimented and organized into the mute system of education that Goethe evidently adumbrates there.

From On the Choice of Books by Thomas Carlyle

There is not one of them that adumbrates a theory that can be called a theory of Progress.

From The Idea of Progress An inguiry into its origin and growth by J. B. (John Bagnell) Bury

But now, while we are shown that the moral sense doctrine in its original form is not true, we are also shown that it adumbrates a truth, and a much higher truth.

From A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution by C. M. Williams

Within its sprawl, each adumbrated alley and plate-glass storefront could hold an entire world.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026

Passages of the original work underlined and adumbrated with exclamation marks and double or even treble question marks; phrases scored out and notes running down the margin at right angles to the printed text.

From The Guardian ● Apr. 28, 2020

In between, works by contemporaries complicate superficial ideas about his meteoric genius, and small, delicate drawings teem with an abundance of ideas — paintings never made, thoughts adumbrated then abandoned.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 18, 2019

But while lauding the rights and privileges of the Americans he observed, Tocqueville also adumbrated the responsibilities that came with being an American citizen.

From Time ● Nov. 2, 2016

The unrevealed and the unrevealable is the soul itself that in such works is dimly adumbrated.

From The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain Nineteenth Century Europe by J. A. (John Adam) Cramb

The filmmakers build to this moment as if it were D-Day or the Rumble in the Jungle, excavating a biographical Before and adumbrating a news media After.

From New York Times ● Jul. 30, 2015

In Wisconsin last week, Nixon gave a paid, 20-minute nationwide radio speech adumbrating a broad and basically moderate approach to the war.

From Time Magazine Archive

There was a blind primeval ferocity to be engendered by adumbrating, even for a few moments, their non-existence.

From Command by William McFee

In three centuries, already some outline has been sketched, rudely adumbrating the future settlement destined for the planet, some infant castrametation has been marked out for the future encampment of nations.

From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 by Various

There only, they implied, could something adumbrating a sacred ritual and a spiritual consolation be preserved.

From The Book of Susan A Novel by Lee Wilson Dodd