adumbrate: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

Attention, BlackBerry smartphone users! Looking for a power word to use in your presentation? Get our new app designed especially for you
Word of the Day for Monday, May 24, 2010 adumbrate \a-DUHM-breyt\, verb: 1. To foreshadow; prefigure. 2. To produce a faint image or resemblance of; to outline or sketch. 3. To darken or conceal partially; overshadow. The four composers represented here were all born in the 16th century, and, with the exception of Viadana, whose works adumbrate the lush Italian baroque which was to follow, are pure and classical Renaissance. -- Classical reviews, Billboard, 1931. Of course ideas - especially political ideas, and especially one's own - pose certain risks for fiction. It is a peculiarity of Eisenberg's writing (Norman Rush may be her only peer in this) that it manages to adumbrate "the structures of the world we live in" without ever telling us what to do. -- Garth Risk Hallburg, "Reality Squared: A Profile of Deborah Eisenberg", The Millions. Adumbrate derives from Latin adumbrare, "to sketch" (literally, "to shade towards," hence "to foreshadow or prefigure"), from ad-, "towards" + umbrare, "to shade," from umbra, "shadow." Read the full entry | See synonyms | Comment on today's word | Suggest tomorrow's word Yesterday's word | Previous words | Help
Get Smarter! Earn your Word Nerd Badge Get the Official Dictionary.com Toolbar
Dictionary.com Word of the Day http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/ You are currently subscribed to Dictionary.com Word of the Day as: dummyposting@gmail.com Unsubscribe To subscribe to Word of the Day by email, please send a blank message to: join-wordoftheday@lists.lexico.com ©2010 by Dictionary.com, LLC. 555 12th Street Suite 500 Oakland CA 94607 Subscriptions to The Word of the Day can be turned on and off via the Web at http://www.dictionary.com/help/faq/wordoftheday/   Tell a friend about The Word of the Day!