tenebrous
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
|
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