Word.ws English Dictionary

shadowy

Syllables: shad·owyUK/ˈʃæd.əʊ.i//ˈʃæd.oʊ.i/

shadowy adjective: in shadow; darkened by shadows.

Adjective

shadowy (comparative shadowier, superlative shadowiest)

  1. In shadow; darkened by shadows.
    • He sat in a shadowy corner.
  2. Dark, obscure.
    • He was a shadowy man who rarely spoke.
    • By 1980, South Korea had overtaken its northern neighbour, and was well on its way to being one of the Asian tigers – high-performing economies, with democratic movements ultimately winning power in the 1990s. The withdrawal of most Soviet aid in 1991, with the fall of the Soviet empire, pushed...2011 December 19, Kerry Brown, “Kim Jong-il obituary”, in The Guardian
  3. (figuratively) Vague, dim, unclear, faint.
  4. (dated, rare) Indulging in fancies; daydreaming.

shadowy meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Odia

shadowy in Urdu

مبہم

shadowy in Bengali

ছায়াময়, অস্পষ্ট, রহস্যময়

shadowy in Malayalam

gloomy, dark, dim
ഛായാത്മകമായ, നിഴൽമൂടിയ, ഇരുണ്ട, മങ്ങിയ, നിഷ്പ്രഭമായ, മ്ലാനമായ
indefinite, indistinct, hazy
അവ്യക്തമായ, അസ്പഷ്ടമായ, വേർതിരിച്ചറിയാൻ പറ്റാത്ത, സ്പഷ്ടതയില്ലാത്ത, തെളിച്ചമില്ലാത്ത, മഞ്ഞുമൂടിയ

shadowy in Odia

ଛାଯ଼ାମଯ଼

Examples of shadowy in a sentence

  • His son was regarded as a shadowy playboy, with rumours circulating over the years that he imported Russian and Chinese prostitutes, and lived a life of profligacy and excess.2011 December 19, Kerry Brown, “Kim Jong-il obituary”, in The Guardian:
  • But the most frequent guests were as New York magazine put it, “Arab princes, Third World officials, and shadowy European and American businessmen.2017 June 7, Adam Lusher, “Adnan Khashoggi: the 'whoremonger' whose arms deals funded a playboy life of decadence and 'pleasure wives'”, in...

All 39 example sentences with shadowy

Forms of shadowy

comparativeshadowier
superlativeshadowiest

Origin of shadowy

From Middle English schadwy, schadowy, equivalent to shadow + -y.

Words formed from shadowy

Questions about shadowy

What does shadowy mean?
Shadowy means in shadow; darkened by shadows.
What is shadowy in Urdu?
Shadowy in Urdu is مبہم. See Shadowy meaning in Urdu.
How do you use shadowy in a sentence?
His son was regarded as a shadowy playboy, with rumours circulating over the years that he imported Russian and Chinese prostitutes, and lived a life of profligacy and excess.
What part of speech is shadowy?
Shadowy is an adjective.
How do you pronounce shadowy?
Shadowy is pronounced /ˈʃæd.oʊ.i/ (US).

Words near shadowy in the dictionary

  1. shadowlessness
  2. shadowlike
  3. shadowplay
  4. shadowplays
  5. shadows
  6. shadowy
  7. shadowzone
  8. shadowzones
  9. Shadrach
  10. Shadrachs
  11. Shadrick

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shadowy (page history and authors); shadowy (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); shadowy (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); shadowy (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); shadowy (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-shadowy.ogg.

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