Word.ws English Dictionary

umbrage

/ˈʌm.bɹɪd͡ʒ/

umbrage noun: a feeling of anger or annoyance caused by something offensive.

Noun

umbrage (countable and uncountable, plural umbrages)

  1. A feeling of anger or annoyance caused by something offensive.
    • Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur.1796, George Washington, "Farewell Address", American Daily Advertiser
    • —He took umbrage at something or other, that muchinjured but on the whole eventempered person declared, I let slip.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 16]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC
  2. A feeling of doubt.
    Synonyms:
    suspicion
  3. Leaves that provide shade, as the foliage of trees.
    • It was a relief to change the cheerful meadow for the dark umbrage of the forest which they now entered.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXXII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 325
    • The handsome dark-eyed boy is Master George Talboys, who declines musa at Eton, and fishes for tadpoles in the clear water under the spreading umbrage beyond the ivied walls of the academy.1862, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret
  4. (obsolete) Shadow; shade.
    • […] but in the verity of extolment I take him to be a soul of great article and his infusion of such dearth and rareness as, to make true diction of him, his semblable in his mirror, and who else would trace him, his umbrage, nothing more.c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...

Verb

umbrage (third-person singular simple present umbrages, present participle umbraging, simple past and past participle umbraged)

  1. (transitive) To displease or cause offense.
  2. (transitive) To shade.

umbrage meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

umbrage in Urdu

برہمی, چھاؤں, چھایا, غیظ, جو سایہ ڈالے, خفگی

umbrage in Bengali

বিরক্তি, অপমান বোধ

umbrage in Malayalam

തണൽ, അപ്രീതി, ഛായ, മറവ്

umbrage in Kannada

ಪದರು, ಅಸಮಾಧಾನ, ಮುನಿಸು, ಅಸಂತೃಪ್ತಿ, ಅಪಚಾರವಾಯಿತೆಂಬ ಭಾವನೆ, ಸೆರಗು

Examples of umbrage in a sentence

  • She looked very neurotic, moving in a jerky way, her body giving little twitches of habitual umbrage.1960, Muriel Spark, chapter 10, in The Bachelors, London: Macmillan:
  • If she knew [a psychiatrist was] observing her son with a view to finding out if he was foggy between the ears, there would be umbrage on her part, or even dudgeon.1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter VI:
  • When the call is over, Cooper thanks her — for leashing the dog, but for also endangering him, for living down to herself, for quite a performance of umbrage.2020 June 3, Wesley Morris, “The Videos That Rocked America. The Song That Knows Our Rage.”, in The New York Times, archived from the...
  • Nixon] took umbrage at [The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour's] jokes about him and an unpopular war.2026 May 20, Stephen Humphries, “End of Stephen Colbert’s show illustrates risks of stirring a polarized nation to laughter”, in The...

Synonyms of umbrage

All synonyms of umbrage

Forms of umbrage

Noun
pluralumbrages
Verb
third-person singular presentumbrages
present participleumbraging
past participleumbraged
pastumbraged

Origin of umbrage

From Middle French ombrage (“umbrage”), from Old French ombrage, from Latin umbrāticus (“in the shade”), from umbra (“shadow, shade”).

Words formed from umbrage

Phrases with umbrage

Questions about umbrage

What does umbrage mean?
Umbrage means a feeling of anger or annoyance caused by something offensive.
What is umbrage in Urdu?
Umbrage in Urdu is برہمی, چھاؤں, چھایا. See Umbrage meaning in Urdu.
How do you use umbrage in a sentence?
She looked very neurotic, moving in a jerky way, her body giving little twitches of habitual umbrage.
What part of speech is umbrage?
Umbrage can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce umbrage?
Umbrage is pronounced /ˈʌm.bɹɪd͡ʒ/.
What is the plural of umbrage?
The plural of umbrage is umbrages.

Words near umbrage in the dictionary

  1. umbraculiferous
  2. umbraculiform
  3. umbraculum
  4. umbradilic acid
  5. umbrae
  6. umbrage
  7. umbraged
  8. umbrageous
  9. umbrageously
  10. umbrageousness
  11. umbrages

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: umbrage (page history and authors); umbrage (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); umbrage (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); umbrage (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); umbrage (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-umbrage.ogg.

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