Word.ws English Dictionary

tenebral

tenebral adjective: profoundly dark.

Adjective

tenebral

  1. Profoundly dark.
    • […] thou tenebral speck of foul negation : […]1898, The Medical Brief: A Monthly Journal of Scientific Medicine, page 296
    • […] despite the mass of tenebral gloom, inseparable from silk hat and black frock-coat, yet the artist shows a sense of "values" and harmony which pleases the observer.1913 March 7, The Architect & Contract Reporter, volume 89, page 245

Examples of tenebral in a sentence

  • But the darkness was tenebral, for the door was closed again, and the blinds were drawn.1925, Louis Tracy, The Black Cat, page 259
  • The shadows on either side of the vessel, the dark waters of the cave to the left, and the hollow rocks to the right, all belong to a tenebral range close to pure black.1986, David Bindman, Essays on British Narrative Art, page 55:
  • There will be a tenebral gloom in that place.2026, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Critical Role campaign 4, episode 29

Origin of tenebral

Apparently from Latin tenebra + -al; compare taxonomic Latin tenebralis.

Questions about tenebral

What does tenebral mean?
Tenebral means profoundly dark.
How do you use tenebral in a sentence?
But the darkness was tenebral, for the door was closed again, and the blinds were drawn.
What part of speech is tenebral?
Tenebral is an adjective.

Words near tenebral in the dictionary

  1. tends to one's knitting
  2. tendsome
  3. tendu
  4. tendus
  5. Tenebrae
  6. tenebral
  7. tenebrescence
  8. tenebrescences
  9. tenebrescent
  10. tenebricose
  11. tenebrific

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tenebral (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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