Brinsley came from behind a police cruiser parked on a busy street in the shadow of the Tompkins Public Houses.
If we begin to see the other as our possession and commodity, our shoe, the shadow of our shadow, is there ever a happy outcome?
They seem to belong to us, and then they freely go—behavior very uncharacteristic of a shadow or a shoe.
Hitchcock saw the work of, and probably met, Murnau, the great German filmmaker--the earliest master of bleak light and shadow.
Krampus makes manifest the shadow sides of human nature that Christianity seeks to repress.
They possessed no watches but they measured time by the shadow of the sun-dial.
His footfall was a feathery thing that carried him like a shadow to the door.
The bright eyes burned at him for a moment longer out of the shadow.
Running the car into the shadow of a ruined house, I try to sleep.
Then the chief slid out of a shadow and come at us like a tiger.
Old English sceadwe, sceaduwe "the effect of interception of sunlight, dark image cast by someone or something when interposed between an object and a source of light," oblique cases ("to the," "from the," "of the," "in the") of sceadu (see shade (n.)). Shadow is to shade (n.) as meadow is to mead (n.2). Cf. Old Saxon skado, Middle Dutch schaeduwe, Dutch schaduw, Old High German scato, German schatten, Gothic skadus "shadow, shade."
From mid-13c. as "darkened area created by shadows, shade." From early 13c. in sense "anything unreal;" mid-14c. as "a ghost;" late 14c. as "a foreshadowing, prefiguration." Meaning "imitation, copy" is from 1690s. Sense of "the faintest trace" is from 1580s; that of "a spy who follows" is from 1859.
As a designation of members of an opposition party chosen as counterparts of the government in power, it is recorded from 1906. Shadow of Death (c.1200) translates Vulgate umbra mortis (Ps. xxiii:4, etc.), which itself translates Greek skia thanatou, perhaps a mistranslation of a Hebrew word for "intense darkness." In "Beowulf," Gendel is a sceadugenga, a shadow-goer, and another word for "darkness" is sceaduhelm. To be afraid of one's (own) shadow "be very timorous" is from 1580s.
Middle English schadowen, Kentish ssedwi, from late Old English sceadwian "to protect as with covering wings" (cf. also overshadow), from the root of shadow (n.). Cf. Old Saxon skadoian, Dutch schaduwen, Old High German scatewen, German (über)schatten. From mid-14c. as "provide shade;" late 14c. as "cast a shadow over" (literal and figurative), from early 15c. as "darken" (in illustration, etc.). Meaning "to follow like a shadow" is from c.1600 in an isolated instance; not attested again until 1872. Related: Shadowed; shadowing.
noun
: They put a shadow on the suspect
verb
To follow a person secretly; do physical surveillance; tail (1872+)
[verb sense found by 1602 in an isolated instance]
