adumbrated
adumbrated is the simple past and past participle of adumbrate.
Adjective
adumbrated (comparative more adumbrated, superlative most adumbrated)
- Obscured.
- We shall, therefore, only very humbly submit whether the whole statement be not rather too theoretic and somewhat too darkly adumbrated in ambiguous phraseology for plain, uncollegian understandings.1826, Rev. James Gilchrist, The Perpetuity of Christian Baptism Maintained, page 43
- Foreshadowed.
- Depicted on a shield as an outline (having the same colour(s) as the field, but often darker) instead of a solid figure. (See "further reading" below.)
Meaning of adumbrate
Verb
adumbrate (third-person singular simple present adumbrates, present participle adumbrating, simple past and past participle adumbrated)
- To foreshadow vaguely.
- From track level, its operating floor looks particularly capacious, but there is a vacant space at one end which was designed to accommodate the control panel for the Perth-Inverness C.T.C. scheme; this was adumbrated as long ago as the 1955 Modernisation Plan, but now seems to be regarded as an...1962 October, G. Freeman Allen, “The New Look in Scotland's Northern Division—II”, in Modern Railways, page 270
- To give a vague outline.
- Accordingly, even though readers always and understandably speak of the theories adumbrated by Socrates here as "Plato's theories", one ought not to speak of them so without some compunction--the writing itself, and also Plato the author, present these always in a spirit of open-ended exploration...1996, John M. Cooper, “Introduction”, in Plato: Complete Works, Hackett, page xxii
- To obscure or overshadow.
Forms of adumbrated
| comparative | more adumbrated |
|---|---|
| superlative | most adumbrated |
Words formed from adumbrated
Questions about adumbrated
- What does adumbrated mean?
- Adumbrated means obscured.
- What is adumbrated the simple past and past participle of?
- Adumbrated is the simple past and past participle of adumbrate.
- What part of speech is adumbrated?
- Adumbrated is an adjective.
Words near adumbrated in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: adumbrated (page history and authors); adumbrate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “adumbrated.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/adumbrated. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.