tenebrous
Appearance
English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Middle English tenebrose, from Anglo-Norman tenebrous (earlier tenebrus), from Latin tenebrōsus, itself from tenebrae (“darkness, shadows”).[1]
Pronunciation
[edit]- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈtɛn.ɪ.bɹəs/, /ˈtɛn.ə.bɹəs/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈtɛn.ə.bɹəs/
- Hyphenation: ten‧e‧brous
Adjective
[edit]tenebrous (comparative more tenebrous, superlative most tenebrous)
- (literary, also figurative) Dark and gloomy; obscure. [from 15th c.]
- Synonyms: see Thesaurus:dark
- 1847 November 1, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, chapter II, in Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie, Boston, Mass.: William D. Ticknor & Company, →OCLC, part II, page 94:
- Over their heads the towering and tenebrous boughs of the cypress
Met in a dusky arch, […]
- 1992, Elizabeth Jane Bellamy, “Troia Vittrice: Reviving Troy in the Woods of Jerusalem”, in Translations of Power: Narcissism and the Unconscious in Epic History, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, →ISBN, page 174:
- […] and it is inevitable that her murdered spirit become a denizen of Jerusalem's tenebrous woods.
- 1993, Georges Duby, Michelle Perrot, “Works and Days”, in Natalie Zemon Davis, Arlette Farge, editors, A History of Women in the West: Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 62:
- White was more delicate, more feminine, more beautiful. Dark was more robust, more masculine, more tenebrous.
- 2008, Kazuo Ishiguro, “Introduction”, in Brian W. Shaffer, Cynthia F. Wong, editors, Conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, →ISBN, page xi:
- Although Ishiguro’s novels are arguably more overtly concerned with emo- tional and psychological matters than with historical ones, it is certainly no accident that he sets all of his novels, as Margaret Atwood maintains, “against tenebrous historical backdrops.”
Derived terms
[edit]Related terms
[edit]- Tenebrae
- tenebricose (rare)
- tenebrific
- tenebrificous (obsolete)
- tenebrionid
- tenebrism
- tenebrity
- tenebrize (rare)
- tenebrose
- tenebrosity
Translations
[edit]dark and gloomy
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References
[edit]- ^ “tenebrous”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
Further reading
[edit]- “tenebrous”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “tenebrous, a. (n.)”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.
Old French
[edit]Adjective
[edit]tenebrous m (oblique and nominative feminine singular tenebrouse)
- (Anglo-Norman) Alternative form of tenebrus
Categories:
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *temH-
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Anglo-Norman
- English terms derived from Latin
- English 3-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- English lemmas
- English adjectives
- English literary terms
- English terms with quotations
- English terms suffixed with -ous
- Old French lemmas
- Old French adjectives
- Anglo-Norman