Word.ws English Dictionary

shadowed

shadowed is the simple past and past participle of shadow.

Meaning of shadow

Verb

shadow (third-person singular simple present shadows, present participle shadowing, simple past and past participle shadowed)

  1. (transitive) To shade, cloud, or darken.
    • The artist chose to shadow this corner of the painting.
  2. (transitive) To block light or radio transmission from.
    • Looks like that cloud's going to shadow us.
  3. (particularly espionage) To secretly or discreetly track or follow another, to keep under surveillance.
    • Soon after departure, we cross the invisible border into Scotland to enjoy more stunning coastal scenery, before the line finally swings inland at Burnmouth to traverse pine-clad valleys, shadowed by the A1 trunk road until we rejoin the coast at Cove, east of Dunbar.2022 November 30, Paul Bigland, “Destination Oban: a Sunday in Scotland”, in RAIL, number 971, page 75
  4. (transitive) To represent faintly and imperfectly.
    • Ah, ye admonitions and warnings! why stay ye not when ye come? But rather are ye predictions than warnings, ye shadows!1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 36, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 182
  5. (transitive) To hide; to conceal.
  6. (intransitive, transitive) To accompany (a professional) during the working day, so as to learn about an occupation one intends to take up.
    • In most cases, interns have mainly observed, or “shadowed,” their Hands-On hosts, but some interns have been given real tasks to perform, […]1980, “Study of the Career Intern Program”, in Alternative Education Models […] , U.S. Department of Labor […] , page 20

See all 28 meanings of shadow

Adjective

shadowed (not comparable)

  1. Depicted with shading, as if showing areas in shadow.
    • [...] 2d and 3d Gules, a Man's Heart proper, Shadowed Or, betwixt three Cinquefoils Ermine, for Hamilton […]1722, Alexander Nisbet, A System of Heraldry Speculative and Practical, page 394
    • The supporters have rede collares about there nekes "bordered with gold, and are vert" shadowed gules and blew, proper, like parates.1862, Thomas Tonge, Heraldic Visitation of the Northern Counties in 1530, page 27

Words formed from shadowed

Questions about shadowed

What does shadowed mean?
Shadowed means depicted with shading, as if showing areas in shadow.
What is shadowed the simple past and past participle of?
Shadowed is the simple past and past participle of shadow.
What part of speech is shadowed?
Shadowed is an adjective.

Words near shadowed in the dictionary

  1. shadowcasting
  2. shadowcasts
  3. shadowdragon
  4. shadowdragons
  5. shadowe
  6. shadowed
  7. Shadowen
  8. Shadowens
  9. Shadowenses
  10. shadower
  11. shadowers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shadowed (page history and authors); shadow (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: “shadowed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shadowed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.