adumbration
Americannoun
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a shadow or faint image of something.
In the south, where the Tibetan plateau begins its gradual rise, we can just glimpse the hazy adumbration of its mountains above the undulating horizon.
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a foreshadowing of or precursor to something.
Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy of 1808 serves in every way as an adumbration of the Ninth Symphony.
The essay is a fascinating adumbration of an idea that would become the author’s obsession six months later.
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concealment or overshadowing.
The haunting tune reflects the sad adumbration of the heroine’s emotional priorities as she rejects her prospective lover.
Etymology
Origin of adumbration
First recorded in 1530–1540; adumbrat(e) ( def. ) + -ion ( def. )
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.
I had distinct memories of my life before my father became sick, but the person I was seemed like a rose-coloured adumbration of my present self.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 26, 2018
The overwhelming majority of the 533 ideas in Works never went further than adumbration and collection in this strangely interminable little book.
From Slate ● Jul. 9, 2014
Obviously, Mr. Edwards had come down to meet friends and, by adumbration of his old authority, facilitate their passage through the customs shed.
From Time Magazine Archive
The book is a thinly disguised, none too complimentary adumbration of Dictator Mussolini.
From Time Magazine Archive
The type must be a true adumbration of the thing typified, though, from the very nature of the case, the adumbration must be inadequate—a shadow only of the antitype, and not its substance.
From Companion to the Bible by E. P. (Elijah Porter) Barrows
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.
