Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Adumbration   Listen
Adumbration

noun
1.
The act of providing vague advance indications; representing beforehand.  Synonyms: foreshadowing, prefiguration.
2.
A sketchy or imperfect or faint representation.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Adumbration" Quotes from Famous Books



... jolly!" gasped Brown, hugging himself. "Haven't had a thrill approaching that since the McGill match, and even that was only a pale adumbration of what I've ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor

... powerful principle of creation, preservation and of renewed life (I. Thessal., 4, 11, seq.).(106) Then there is the incentive of the demand of God's voice within us, the voice of conscience, whether we call it, in philosophic outline "the adumbration of the ideas of equity, right, benevolence, of perfection and inner freedom," or, framing our lives in accordance with them, the striving after the Kingdom of God.(107) It matters not, how much the image of God may have been disfigured ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... of the small size, in which my Friend—punctuall as in Matters of less Moment, so in this more weighty one—used nightly, and upon his First Rising, to read a sett Portion. And I taking it up—not without a Tear duly paid to him wich from the Study of this poorer Adumbration was now pass'd to the contemplation of its great Originall—it came into my Thoughts, as at such moments of Helplessness we are prone to catch at any the least Glimmer that makes promise of Light, to make trial of that old and by many accounted Superstitious ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James

... as either. You will remember that Luther found it out before me. The religious enthusiasm we bring in may serve our turn while we are here: it will be odd if any survive for the return; impossible to go away as fervid as we come. Other enthusiasms will fatten; but the wonderful Gothic adumbration of Christianity was born in the North and has never been healthy anywhere else. Gothicism, driven southward, runs speedily to seed; an amazing luxuriance, a riot, strange flowers of heavy shapes and maddening savour; ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... radical, audacious, and effective. The notes are G flat, A sharp, and B natural, and the world reels as we hear them. Everything is ours in this scene—orchestration, vocalization, dramatization, characterization, gesticulation, auditory inflammation, cacophonation, demoralization, adumbration. ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the brains to know it, there lay before me as fine a field as any craftsman in the art of fiction ever had a chance to glean in. It is an impertinence for a man to speak of his own work, but I have often thought in my own story of Aunt Rachel, there is at least an adumbration of what a man aimed with real sympathy and humour might have done with the people of that place and time. When I say that the characters in Aunt Rachel are all real, I do not mean to make the foolish boast that they are all alive. I mean simply to say that they are all sketches from ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... further, let me remind you of how this contrast is borne out by the fact that all that previous system was an adumbration, a shadow and a premonition of the perfect revelation that was to come. Temple, priest, sacrifice, law, the whole body of the Mosaic constitution of things was, as it were, a shadow thrown along the road in advance by the swiftly coming King. The shadow fell before Him, but when ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... imaginary beings is certainly quite unique; she is strictly, as one may say, sui generis in the whole world of fiction. A figment born from a figment; one fancy evolved from another; the shadow of a shadow. If only in remembrance of that one daring adumbration from Mrs. Gamp'sinner consciousness, that purely supposititious entity "which her name, I'll not deceive you, is Harris," one would say that Mr. Mould, the undertaker, has full reason for exclaiming, in regard to Mrs. Gamp, "I'll tell you what, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... which parts us from one another, Jesus Christ assumes the Divine prerogative of passing and joining Himself to each of us, if we love Him and trust Him, in a union so close, and with a communication of life so real, that every other union which we know is but a faint and far-off adumbration of it. A oneness of life from root to branch, which is the sole cause of fruitfulness and growth, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... conditions, an idea of existence, so little correspondent with the ways and modes of this world—which we are apt to think the only world, that the best choice I can make of word or phrase is but an adumbration of what I would convey. I begin indeed to fear that I have undertaken an impossibility, undertaken to tell what I cannot tell because no speech at my command will fit the forms in my mind. Already I have set down ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald

... these trivialities the grand results which send Shakib in ecstasies about his Master's genius. Nor do we for a moment believe that the waywardness of a genius or a prophet in boyhood is always a significant adumbration. Shakespeare started as a deer-poacher, and Rousseau as a thief. Yet, neither the one nor the other, as far as we know, was a plagiarist. This, however, does not disprove the contrary proposition, that he who begins ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... himself powerless to go on with his work. He pottered a while longer among the books and cards, but they were meaningless. They appeared an utter futility. Why index a lot of nonsense? Somehow this recalled his flare, his adumbration of some great idea connected with young Arkwright and the ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... chestnut of her thick hair was dank and sodden with brine, the wistful face that she turned up to him was pinched and colorless and blue about the lips. She seemed, of a sudden, as she leaned heavily on his arm, a presaging apparition out of the dim future, an adumbration of her own body grown frail and old, looking up to him for help, calling forlornly to him for solace. And in that impressionable moment his heart had gone out to her, in a burst of pity that seemed deeper and ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer



Words linked to "Adumbration" :   prefiguration, prevision, anticipation, representation, prediction, foreshadowing



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com