Word.ws English Dictionary

adumbrates

adumbrates is the third-person singular simple present indicative of adumbrate.

Meaning of adumbrate

Verb

adumbrate (third-person singular simple present adumbrates, present participle adumbrating, simple past and past participle adumbrated)

  1. (transitive) 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
  2. (transitive) 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
  3. (transitive) To obscure or overshadow.

Questions about adumbrates

What is adumbrates the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Adumbrates is the third-person singular simple present indicative of adumbrate.

Words near adumbrates in the dictionary

  1. adumbers
  2. adumbral
  3. adumbrant
  4. adumbrate
  5. adumbrated
  6. adumbrates
  7. adumbrating
  8. adumbration
  9. adumbrationism
  10. adumbrations
  11. adumbrative

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: adumbrates (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.

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