FromLatinadumbrātiō(“sketch; outline, silhouette; pretence, semblance”) +-ion(suffix indicating a condition or state).Adumbrātiō is derived fromadumbrāre (presentactiveinfinitive ofadumbrō(“to represent an object with light and shade, to shade; to represent in outline, to outline, silhouette, sketch; to cast a shadow on, overshadow, shade; to copy, counterfeit, imitate”)) +-tiō(suffix formingnouns relating to actions or the results of actions).[1]Adumbrō is derived fromad-(prefix meaning ‘to, towards’) +umbrō(“to cast a shadow, to shade; to overshadow”) (fromumbra(“shade; shadow; ghost”)).
1755,[François] Fénelon, “Sect. XXX. Of Man.”, inA[bel] Boyer, transl.,A Demonstration of the Existence and Attributes of God, Drawn from the Knowledge of Nature.[...] Translated from the French, Glasgow: Printed and sold byR[obert] andA[ndrew] Foulis,→OCLC,page62:
If it be true, that there is a Firſt Being who has drawn or created all the reſt from nothing, man is truly his image; [...]. But an image, is but an image ſtill, and can be but anadumbration or ſhadow of the true perfect Being.
[O]ne of these, [...] seems to have felt some irritation at the obscurity of certain terms not well understood, being in the Latin, or the Greek language, or derived from thence; so that not being able to get at the root, he could not comprehend the stem of the tree; nor enjoy theadumbration of the branches and foliage.
And grief from my ma's passing was still with me; such things, like shadows, never leave; they just seem to fade for a time, only to return later. So to the sea I would go, and to New Providence, in a vain attempt to outdistance my ownadumbration.
1631,Francis [Bacon], “II. Century. [Experiments in Consort Touching Exteriour, and Interiour Sounds.]”, inSylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries.[…], 3rd edition, London:[…]William Rawley[…];[p]rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee[…],→OCLC, paragraph 186,page54:
There is another Difference ofSounds, which wee callExteriour, andInteriour. [...] Wee ſhall therefore enumerate them, rather than preciſely diſtinguiſh them; Though (to make ſomeAdumbration of that wee meane) theInteriour is rather anImpulſion orContuſion of theAire, than anEliſion orSection of the ſame.
1677,Matthew Hale, “The Fourth Instance of Fact Seeming to Evince the Novity of Mankind, Namely, the Inceptions of the Religions and Deities of the Heathens, and the Deficiency of this Instance”, inThe Primitive Origination of Mankind, Considered and Examined According to the Light of Nature, London: Printed by William Godbid, for William Shrowsbery[…],→OCLC, section II,page166:
For almoſt in all ſenſible Creatures, eſpecially thoſe of the more perfect kind, a certain Image or weakAdumbration of ſomething like Reaſon appears, yet we find no Creatures below Mankind any thing like Religion, or Veneration of a Deity: [...]
1809, I[ohn] B[ayly] S[ommers] Carwithen, “Discourse III. On the Correspondence of the Brahminical Records, with the Mosaical Account of the Deluge.”, inA View of the Brahminical Religion, in Its Confirmation of the Truth of the Sacred History, and in Its Influence of the Moral Character;[…], London: Printed forCadell and Davies,[…]; forJ[ohn] M[athew] Gutch,[…]; and for J. Parker,[…], published1810,→OCLC,page83:
[V]ague and unsatisfactory would all these evidences appear, if they had not been illustrated and confirmed by that narrative, of which all other records are but faintadumbrations.
[Zechariah] Chafee, in his landmark bookFreedom of Speech, provided more than anadumbration of civil liberties for future legal scholars—he helped to define the issues and parameters of serious debate on the subject.
ADUMBRATION, [inHeraldry] an abſolute taking avvay of the Charge or Thing born, ſo that nothing of it remains but the bare Proportion of the out Lines.]
1793,James Dallaway, “Sect. II”, inInquiries into the Origin and Progress of the Science of Heraldry in England. With Explanatory Observations on Armorial Ensigns, Gloucester, Gloucestershire: Printed byR[obert] Raikes, forT[homas] Cadell,[…],→OCLC,pages110–111:
It is ſaid, that ſome [emblazoned shields] bore the outline or tracing only, inſtead of the armorial figures complete; becauſe, having loſt the ſeigniory, they retained only the ſhadow of their property and conſequence. In the ſtate of the practice of delineating coat armour in the fourteenth century, it may be doubted, whether theadumbration of figures could be ſatisfactorily deſigned; and it is therefore to be allowed rather as an imaginary diſtinction, than as implying, what we have no authority to decide upon, that when the patrimonial eſtate was alienated, the poſſeſſor, in every inſtance, made at the ſame time a ceſſion of his hereditary bearing.
1893,James Balfour Paul, “Introduction”, inAn Ordinary of Arms Contained in the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland, Edinburgh: William Green & Sons,→OCLC,pages xiii–xiv:
The mysteriousadumbration or shadowing which occurs in some of the Hamilton coats, is also interesting, because rare, though it hardly bears out the statement of some writers that it was adopted by families who, having lost their possessions, and consequently being unable to maintain their dignity, chose rather to bear their hereditary arms adumbrated than abandon them altogether.
1669,Thomas Browne; Thomas Keck, annotator,Religio Medici.[…], 6th corrected and amended edition, London: Printed by Ja[mes] Cotterel, for Andrew Crook,→OCLC, section 10,page19:
[W]here there is an obſcurity too deep for our Reaſon, 'tis good to ſit down with a deſcription, periphraſis, oradumbration; for by acquainting our reaſon how unable it is to diſplay the viſible and obvious effects of nature, it becomes more humble and ſubmiſſive unto the ſubtilties of faith: [...]
1767, Richard Clarke,The Gospel of the Daily-service of the Law, Preached to the Jew and Gentile, in an Explanation of that Grand Ritual, Comprehended in these Six Branches;[…], London: Printed and sold by J. Townsend,[…],→OCLC,pages97–98:
Now, no Prieſt was ſuffered to eat the Fleſh, or drink the Blood, of this Sacrifice, becauſe it was a myſticalAdumbration of a ſpiritual Feaſt above, [...]
1833,Daniel Wilson, “Lecture XXIV. The Sound Interpretation of the Records of Revelation.”, inThe Evidences of Christianity: Stated in a Popular and Practical Manner, in a Course of Lectures, Delivered in the Parish Church of St. Mary, Islington.[...] In Two Volumes (Library of Religious Knowledge; VI), 2nd revised and improved edition, volume II (Containing the Lectures on the Internal Evidences), Boston, Mass.: Published byCrocker and Brewster,[…]; New York, N.Y.:Jonathan Leavitt,[…],→OCLC,page280:
Human nature soon forgets the infinite grace and power of the Christian redemption, and loses herself amidst the figures andadumbrations of the law, the enactments of the Jewish polity, the directions and rules laid down for the early churches.
The exaggeration with darkness imparted to the glooms of this region impressed Henchard more than he had expected. The lugubrious harmony of the spot with his domestic situation was too perfect for him, impatient of effects, scenes, andadumbrations.
He [John Ronald Reuel Tolkien] came to think of his story as a reflection of, oradumbration of, the biblical drama of redemption. In the years following the publication ofThe Lord of the Rings, his letters disclose an increasingly explicit commitment on his part to the link between his story and the greater Story of which God is the sole Author.
2008, Diana Stirling, “Online Learning in Context”, in Jan Visser, Muriel Visser-Valfrey, editors,Learners in a Changing Learning Landscape: Reflections from a Dialogue on New Roles and Expectations, Dordrecht:Springer Science+Business Media,→DOI,→ISBN, abstract,page164:
It will be argued that the lack ofadumbrations in online communication necessitates explicit communication by participants in the process of co-creating meaning and context density.
[D]ivine presence, direct as it is, is mediated in temple forms, practices, and procedures. Such a guarded Real Presence is anadumbration of the entire struggle of Christian sacramental theology with Real Presence.
1983,Edmund Husserl, “Consciousness and Natural Actuality”, in F. Kersten, transl.,Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, paperback edition, The Hague; Boston, Mass.:Martinus Nijhoff Publishers; Dordrecht:Kluwer Academic Publishers,→ISBN, part 2 (The Considerations Fundamental to Phenomenology), §44 (Merely Phenomenal Being of Something Transcendent, Absolute Being of Something Immanent),page94:
Of necessity a physical thing can be given only "one-sidedly;" and that signifies, not just incompletely or imperfectly in some sense or other, but precisely what presentation byadumbrations prescribes.
1991, Christopher Macann, “The Impossibility of a Phenomenological Constitution of the Flux of Inner Time Consciousness”, inPresence and Coincidence: The Transformation of Transcendental into Ontological Phenomenology (Phaenomenologica;119), Dordrecht:Springer Science+Business Media,→DOI,→ISBN,page65:
Just as the intentional horizon of the spatial object is made up of thoseadumbrations which would be implied were I to walk around the object and view it from different points of view, so the intentional horizon of the temporal object is made up of retentions and protensions.
Obviously, he [Edmund Husserl] assumes thatadumbrations existin consciousness and that they are real parts of the stream of conscious experiences. Otherwise he should have inferred from the thought-experiment of the destruction of the world that in this case consciousness would existtogether with a chaotic stream ofadumbrations.
, Oxford:Oxford University Press, December 2011.