adjective
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full of shadows; dark; shady
-
resembling a shadow in faintness; vague
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illusory or imaginary
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mysterious or secretive
a shadowy underworld figure
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of shadowy
First recorded in 1325–75, shadowy is from the Middle English word shadewy. See shadow, -y 1
Explanation
The adjective shadowy is good for describing things that are mysterious or hard to see, like a dim figure in the fog or the social rules of a typical middle school. Indistinct or faint objects are shadowy, whether they're distant people standing in a dark alley or birds you can barely see against the choppy surface of the ocean. You can also describe something that's ghostly or unreal as shadowy. A shadowy room or a shadowy figure brushing past you would both be insubstantial and vaguely spooky. The root of shadowy is the Old English word sceadu, "shade, shadow, or darkness."
Vocabulary lists containing shadowy
"Ode to the Table" by Pablo Neruda
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The One and Only Ivan
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The Wild Robot
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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.
See Examples For:
Instead, she saw a black shadowy mist drifting around the room filled with toys.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 31, 2026
Hart’s “Meeting Ourselves” is woozy and vaguely threatening, with lines like “Don’t be scared / Open the door” bringing to mind a shadowy Lewis Carroll adventure.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 27, 2026
He features in a BBC World Service documentary about the shadowy world of Russian saboteurs.
From BBC ● Oct. 19, 2026
The exhibition is organized into six themed “chambers” devoted to Gothic horror, psychological horror, science, slashers, religion and ghosts, with settings ranging from a shadowy crypt to a killer’s house and a haunted living room.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026
I drifted at last into uneasy sleep, and dreamt many evil dreams, and in one I saw a shadowy figure with no face creeping into our hut and bearing away the ten ollocks of rice.
From "Nectar in a Sieve" by Kamala Markandaya
Shadowy organizations lurk in the shadows of other shadowier organizations.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 21, 2025
If that weren’t enough, I was just introduced to an even shadowier cabal of villains who are controlling the people who control the colonies.
From The Verge ● Jul. 26, 2022
Angleton had, in effect, weaponized this strategy of interpretation—convinced that any apparently straightforward reference in the world in fact meant something shadowier than it seemed to.
From The New Yorker ● Aug. 26, 2019
Toward the end of the book, we find out where the narrator has been imprisoned, who the shadowy Commandant is, and why everyone is afraid of an even shadowier character known as the Commissar.
From New York Times ● Aug. 27, 2015
But the shadowiest of the show's shadowy secrets is its music.
From BBC ● Oct. 18, 2026
The anarchist and critic Félix Fénéon, one of the shadowiest mavericks of turn-of-the-century France, was sometimes described by his artist friends as a Yankee—a term intended to give him a dangerous gloss of American exoticism.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 3, 2014
And it is not quite accurate to say that it had no memory for him, for he brought with him one of that very miller's daughter, though, indeed, it was of the shadowiest silver.
From The Book-Bills of Narcissus An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne by Richard Le Gallienne
The higher objects of Government were, if at all, outlined in the shadowiest form in his imagination.
From Ginx's Baby: his birth and other misfortunes; a satire by Edward Jenkins
The characters are rather dim and indistinct, the shadowiest of all being Emma, who has no personality at all, and is a mere complement to the immaculate Edmund's happiness.
From The Tale of Terror A Study of the Gothic Romance by Edith Birkhead
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
