tenebrous
1
9.9
- adjective
- /ˈtɛnəbrəs/
- Literature
:
tenebroso
- The tenebrous forest was filled with strange sounds, making everyone feel uneasy.
A forever of interior light, not retinal but spacious tenebrous light, uninflected by time or day or circumstance.
- A forever of interior light, not retinal but spacious tenebrous light, uninflected by time or day or circumstance.
Examples
-
Because to look further would encumber this poor thing with unremitting discontent by exposing the tenebrous walls and limits of its existence.
Fiction book (1991) -
Instead, standing in that tenebrous room, straining to imagine what machine it might be, she felt her heartbeat accelerate.
Fiction book (1991) -
I am tenebrous, or tenebrious if you prefer, it's all the same.
Fiction book (1997) -
A forever of interior light, not retinal but spacious tenebrous light, uninflected by time or day or circumstance.
-
Her body, composed as if for a society portrait, glows white against the massive stones of the tenebrous prison, and her steady gaze meets that of the viewer.
Academic text (2011) -
For a mind shrouded in tenebrous vapors like yours, this is a model NDPR review, and pointing out the conflict of interest you insist on defending is "blowing smoke."
Blog text (26) -
He had seen no rats at all, anywhere, in all the weeks he had roamed the tenebrous corridors and silent rooms of that vast structure, though he would not have been averse to sharing space with them.
Fiction book (1992) -
Everything burned with the tenebrous significance of dreams—every brick and stone, the scraps of newsprint tumbling.
Fiction book (2002) -
Swollen tight with vanity, he would pump his ancient bellows to undertake the magisterial yet tenebrous concept of reverberation, putrefaction, extraction, calcination, final projection, reduction, and the like.
Fiction book (1991) -
That when he came to her with the bolo or machete and a hunting knife in his belt, and some kind of ritualistic design like a samekh or palsied omicron drawn on his tenebrous brow in the blood or lipstick of a previous victim, and turned her.
Fiction book (1997)
Synonyms
1
9.9
Dark and gloomy in a way that makes you feel uncertain or afraid
Dark and gloomy in a way that makes a place feel sad or scary
Dark and gloomy in a way that makes a place feel scary
A place that is dark and misty and feels gloomy
Dark and sad in a way that makes you feel unhappy
Very dark, almost black, in color or very sad and gloomy
Antonyms
How Dark
Surface Forms
Morphology
tenebrous = tenebrae (opaque) = tenebr + ous
The adjective uses the productive suffix '-ous', but the root 'tenebr-' is a Latin combining form not a standalone English word, so learners cannot reliably infer the meaning from familiar English base words.
Etymology
Tenebrous comes from the Latin word tenebrae, which means 'darkness' or 'shadows'. So a tenebrous place is full of gloom and shadow, and the word is used for very dark or mysterious scenes.