adumbrate

American  

[a-duhm-breyt, ad-uhm-breyt] / 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  

/ ædˈʌmbrətɪv, 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

She marked the colour—lilac—as if faintly to adumbrate the imperial purple of Rome.

From The Passionate Elopement by MacKenzie, Compton

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

Of the six "Idyls," three—"In the Woods," "Siesta," and "To the Moonlight"—are memorable, though uneven; and of these the third, after Goethe's "An den Mond," adumbrates faintly MacDowell's riper manner.

From Edward MacDowell by Gilman, Lawrence

The eyes of education are fixed always upon the future, and philosophy of whatever kind, directly adumbrates a Utopia, thinks on educational lines.

From Cambridge Essays on Education by Various

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 Williams, C. M.

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

His work on neuroscience and his initial support of McCulloch and Pitts adumbrated the startlingly effective deep-learning methods of the present day.

From Slate ● Feb. 28, 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

Being in this darkened aisle, he felt as if he were once again the adumbrated boy whom he once was.

From An Apostate: Nawin of Thais by Sills, Steven (Steven David Justin)

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

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

From The So-called Human Race by Taylor, Bert Leston

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

From Beulah by Evans, Augusta J. (Augusta Jane)

Adum′brant, Adum′brative, adumbrating or giving a faint shadow.—n.

From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 1 of 4: A-D) by Various