Adjacent Words

Shadowy definitions

	Tweet

Webster's 1828 Dictionary

SHAD'OWY, a.
1. Full of shade; dark; gloomy.
This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods. Shak.
2. Not brightly luminous; faintly light.
More pleasant light
Shadowy sets off the face of things. Milton.
3. Faintly representative; typical; as shadowy expiations.
4. Unsubstantial; unreal.
Milton has brought into his poems two actors of a shadowy and fictitious nature, in the persons of Sin and Death. Addison.
5. Dark; obscure; opake.
By command ere yet dim night
Her shadowy cloud withdraws. Milton.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: filled with shade; "the shady side of the street"; "the surface of the pond is dark and shadowed"; "we sat on rocks in a shadowy cove"; "cool umbrageous woodlands" [syn: shady, shadowed, shadowy, umbrageous]
2: lacking clarity or distinctness; "a dim figure in the distance"; "only a faint recollection"; "shadowy figures in the gloom"; "saw a vague outline of a building through the fog"; "a few wispy memories of childhood" [syn: dim, faint, shadowy, vague, wispy]
3: lacking in substance; "strange fancies of unreal and shadowy worlds"- W.A.Butler; "dim shadowy forms"; "a wraithlike column of smoke" [syn: shadowy, wraithlike]

Merriam Webster's

adjective Date: 14th century 1. a. of the nature of or resembling a shadow ; unsubstantial b. faintly perceptible ; indistinct, vague 2. being in or obscured by shadow <deep shadowy interiors> 3. a. shady 1 b. shady 3 • shadowily adverb • shadowiness noun

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. 1 like or having a shadow. 2 full of shadows. 3 vague, indistinct. Derivatives: shadowiness n.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Shadowy Shad"ow*y, a. 1. Full of shade or shadows; causing shade or shadow. ``Shadowy verdure.'' --Fenton. This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods. --Shak. 2. Hence, dark; obscure; gloomy; dim. ``The shadowy past.'' --Longfellow. 3. Not brightly luminous; faintly light. The moon . . . with more pleasing light, Shadowy sets off the face things. --Milton. 4. Faintly representative; hence, typical. From shadowy types to truth, from flesh to spirit. --Milton. 5. Unsubstantial; unreal; as, shadowy honor. Milton has brought into his poems two actors of a shadowy and fictitious nature, in the persons of Sin and Death. --Addison.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

1. A shadowy place is dark or full of shadows. I watched him from a shadowy corner. ADJ: usu ADJ n 2. A shadowy figure or shape is someone or something that you can hardly see because they are in a dark place. ...a tall, shadowy figure silhouetted against the pale wall. ADJ: ADJ n 3. You describe activities and people as shadowy when very little is known about them. ...the shadowy world of spies. = mysterious ADJ

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. 1. Shady, umbrageous. 2. Dark, obscure, dim, murky, gloomy. 3. Unreal, unsubstantial, impalpable, intangible, visionary, imaginary, spectral, ghostly. 4. Typical, representative.

Moby Thesaurus

air-built, airy, aleatoric, aleatory, amorphous, asomatous, astral, blear, bleared, bleary, blind, blobby, blurred, blurry, bodiless, bosky, bowery, broad, cadaverous, chance, chancy, chaotic, chimerical, clear as mud, cloud-built, cloudy, confused, corpselike, dark, darkling, deathlike, decarnate, decarnated, dim, discarnate, disembodied, disordered, dreamlike, dusky, ectoplasmic, ethereal, etheric, extramundane, faint, fancied, fanciful, fatuitous, fatuous, feeble, filmy, fleeting, foggy, fuzzy, gaseous, general, ghostish, ghostlike, ghostly, ghosty, gloomy, gossamery, half-seen, half-visible, hallucinatory, hazy, hit-or-miss, ill-defined, illusory, imaginary, imagined, immaterial, impalpable, imponderable, imprecise, inaccurate, inchoate, incoherent, inconspicuous, incorporate, incorporeal, indecisive, indefinable, indefinite, indeterminable, indeterminate, indistinct, indistinguishable, inexact, insubstantial, intangible, lax, leafy, loose, low-profile, merely glimpsed, misty, muddy, murky, nebulous, nonmaterial, nonphysical, nonspecific, notional, obscure, obumbrate, obumbrated, occult, opaque, orderless, otherworldly, out of focus, overshaded, overshadowed, pale, penumbral, phantasmal, phantasmic, phantom, phantomic, phantomlike, psychic, random, rarefied, semivisible, shaded, shadow, shadowed forth, shady, shapeless, specterlike, spectral, spiritual, spirituous, stochastic, subtile, subtle, supernatural, sweeping, tenuous, transcendent, transitory, transmundane, umbral, uncertain, unclear, undefined, undestined, undetermined, unearthly, unembodied, unextended, unfleshly, unphysical, unplain, unreal, unrecognizable, unspecified, unsubstantial, unworldly, vague, vaporous, veiled, visionary, weak, windy, wraithlike, wraithy