[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. Lett. 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, 11/2. The Prime Minister’s adumbration of measures.
3. Symbolic representation typifying or prefiguring the reality.
1622. 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. 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. Longf., Wayside Inn, Interl. III. 9. Above them … its awful adumbration passed, A luminous shadow, vague and vast.
