adumbrate
adumbrated; adumbrates; adumbrating
To adumbrate something is to outline it. In an English essay, you could adumbrate the themes in a novel; or, in a letter to Santa, you could adumbrate all the ways you have been behaving.
Adumbrate is built on the Latin root umbra, "shade," and the image it evokes is of a shadow being cast around something. Your outline is like a shadow of something bigger — like the themes in that novel or the ways you have been behaving. You can also use adumbrate to mean "foreshadow": "The scene where the princess dreams of the vampire adumbrates her later discovery that her little brother is, in fact, a vampire."
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describe roughly or briefly or give the main points or summary of
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give to understand
Vocabulary lists containing adumbrate
This nonfiction book presents research about the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere before the arrival of Europeans in 1492, shedding new light on the knowledge that these groups had in the fields of science, engineering, medicine, agriculture, and more.
This satire of life in a small town is set in Gopher Prairie, Minnesota in the early 20th century.
This classic novel explores social class and conventions in early 20th-century England. Read the full text here.
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