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.

---

adumbrate British  

/ ˈædʌmˌbreɪt /

verb

1. to outline; give a faint indication of

2. to foreshadow

3. to overshadow; obscure

---

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

By week's end, with Laval's return from Paris, Vichy began, if not to explain, at least to adumbrate.

From Time Magazine Archive

And during it all an eternal song, of which it catches now and then a few words which adumbrate still higher wonders.

From The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 04 Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes by Kuno Francke

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

The figure of the villain, too, adumbrates, though faintly, the type which engaged Hawthorne's mind in later years.

From Nathaniel Hawthorne by George Edward Woodberry

It adumbrates the indescribable by metaphors and figures.

From Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 1 by Sir Charles Eliot

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

He vaguely adumbrated what it was out of which she came.

From The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

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

"Did you notice Mr. Boldwood's doings in church this morning, miss?"Liddy continued, adumbrating by the remark the track her thoughts had taken.

From Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

It seems to me a poem of symbols, dimly adumbrating truths, which my clouded intellect clutches at in vain.

From Beulah by Augusta J. (Augusta Jane) Evans

This one’s descent was mincing, hesitant, adumbrating dread of disclosures—these expectedly ample, columnar, massive.

From The So-called Human Race by Bert Leston Taylor

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

---