Word.ws English Dictionary

obumbrate

UK/ɒˈbʌmbreɪt/US/ɑˈbəmˌbreɪt/

obumbrate verb: to shade; to darken; to cloud. Also the past participle of obumbrate.

Verb

obumbrate (third-person singular simple present obumbrates, present participle obumbrating, simple past and past participle obumbrated)

  1. (rare) To shade; to darken; to cloud.
    • those clouds, which did hang over and thus obumbrate him1640, I. H. [i.e., James Howell], ΔΕΝΔΡΟΛΟΓΊΑ [DENDROLOGIA]. Dodona’s Grove, or, The Vocall Forrest, London: […] T[homas] B[adger] for H. Mosley [i.e., Humphrey Moseley] […], →OCLC
  2. (obsolete, transitive) To foreshadow, prefigure.

Adjective

obumbrate (not comparable)

  1. (rare) Lying under some projecting part, like the abdomen of certain spiders.
  2. (Scotland, obsolete) Overshadowed, darkened.

Also used as

obumbrate is also the past participle of obumbrate.

Forms of obumbrate

third-person singular presentobumbrates
present participleobumbrating
past participleobumbrated
pastobumbrated

Origin of obumbrate

Borrowed from Latin obumbrātus, perfect passive participle of obumbrō (“to overshadow, cloud”), from ob + to shade; see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix).

Questions about obumbrate

What does obumbrate mean?
Obumbrate means to shade; to darken; to cloud.
What part of speech is obumbrate?
Obumbrate can be a verb or an adjective.
How do you pronounce obumbrate?
Obumbrate is pronounced /ɒˈbʌmbreɪt/ (UK).
What is the past tense of obumbrate?
The past tense of obumbrate is obumbrated.

Words near obumbrate in the dictionary

  1. obumber
  2. obumbered
  3. obumbering
  4. obumbers
  5. obumbrant
  6. obumbrate
  7. obumbrated
  8. obumbrates
  9. obumbrating
  10. obumbration
  11. obumbrations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: obumbrate (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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Cite this entry: “obumbrate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/obumbrate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.