adumbration
(ædʌmˈbreɪʃən)
[ad. L. adumbrātiōn-em, n. of action, f. adumbrā-re; see adumbrate.]
† 1. Shading in painting. Obs.
| 1531 Elyot Governor (1580) 207 Alexander..came to the shop of Apelles..reasoned with him of lynes, adumbrations, proportions and other lyke things perteining to imagery. |
2. Representation in outline, sketching; and concr. an outline, a sketch; a shadowy figure; a faint or slight sketch or description.
| 1552 Huloet, Adumbration or light description of a house side or front, where the lyue [? line] do answer to the compasse and centrye of euerye parte. Scenographia. 1586 Let. to Earl Leycester 2 Her inward vertues, whereof it is impossible for mee to make the least adumbration. 1656 Jeanes Fulnesse of Christ 14 Painters, whose first rude or imperfect draught is termed a shadow, or adumbration, upon which they lay afterwards the lively colours. 1677 Gale Crt. of Gentiles II. iii. 90 The Pagan Philosophers had some kind of..dark adumbration or shadowy description of the first principles of Nature. 1872 Mivart Anat. 290 The only faint adumbration of such organs, outside Man's Class, is to be found in Pigeons. 1876 Lowell Among my Bks. ii. 43 Nor capable of being told unless by far-off hints and adumbrations. 1880 H. James Benvalio i. 346 Like the dim adumbration of the darker half of the lunar disk. 1882 Times 4 May, The Prime Minister's adumbration of measures. |
3. Symbolic representation typifying or pre-figuring the reality.
| 1622 M. Fotherby Atheom. 27 Which three Arts haue apparently an adumbration of the Trinity. 1650 Gregory Serm. on Resurr. 60 Death as it is here..under the type and adumbration of sleep. 1748 Hartley Observ. Man i. iii. §1. 319 An Emblem, or Adumbration of our Passage through the Present Life. 1858 E. H. Sears Athanasia vii. 58 The reality of which earth is only a dull and feeble adumbration. |
4. Her. An outline figure.
| 1610 J. Guillim Heraldrie ii. iii. 42 Adumbration, or Transparency, is a cleere exemption of the substance of the Charge, or thing borne, in such sort as that there remaineth nothing thereof to be discerned, but the naked and bare proportion of the outward lineaments thereof. |
5. Overshadowing; shade, obscuration.
| 1653 Manton Expos. James i. 17 in Wks. 1871 IV. 110 Stars, according to their different light and posture, have divers adumbrations. 1658 Sir T. Browne Gard. Cyrus II. 549 The sight being..circumscribed between long parallels and the ἐπισκιασµὸς and adumbration from the branches. 1863 Longfellow Wayside Inn Interl. iii. 9 Above them..its awful adumbration passed, A luminous shadow, vague and vast. |