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
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
The choice of adverb is peculiarly pregnant, contriving as it does simultaneously to affirm faith and to adumbrate doubt.
From Time Magazine Archive
The least imaginative man could see that here was an invention that would be epoch-making, but the most visionary dreamer could not even vaguely adumbrate the real measure of its importance.
From A History of Science — Volume 3 by Williams, Henry Smith
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.
