shade

shade n 1 Shade, shadow, umbrage, umbra, penumbra, adumbration can mean the comparative darkness caused by something which intercepts rays of light.

Shade carries no implication of a darkness that has a particular form or definite limit but the term often stresses protection from the glare, heat, or other effect of the light that is cut off

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the forest, one vast mass of mingling shade— Shelley

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chiaroscuro, by which light reveals [in paintings] the richness of shade and shade heightens the brightness of light— Ellis

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the trees afforded shade and shelter— Cather

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Shadow usually applies to shade which preserves something of the form of the object which intercepts the light

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it [the garden] . . . has neither arbor, nor alcove, nor other shade, except the shadow of the house— Cowper

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saw ... the shadow of some piece of pointed lace, in the Queen's shadow, yibrate on the walls— Tennyson

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the shadowless winter, when it is all shade and therefore no shadow— Jefferies

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In extended use shade implies darkness or obscurity; shadow, insubstantiality or unreality

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there no shade can last in that deep dawn behind the tomb— Tennyson

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'tis but the shadow of a wife you see, the name and not the thing— Shak.

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Umbrage (see also OFFENSE) applies chiefly to the shade cast by heavy foliage or trees, though sometimes it refers to the mass of trees or foliage which make for heavy shade

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branches . . : spreading their umbrage to the circumference of two hundred and seven feet— Strutt

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the thrush sings in that umbrage—L. P. Smith

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Its occasional extended use can draw meaning from either of these aspects and suggest, on the one hand, an indistinct indication, as if of something seen in deep shadow

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the least umbrage of a reflection upon this accident— North

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or, on the other, an overshadowing influence

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to compete in the umbrage of big city . . . wages and other costs he had to simplify his . . . process— J. R. Malone

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Umbra and penumbra are largely astronomical and optical terms.

Umbra applies to the perfect or complete shadow cast on the moon or the earth in an eclipse, and penumbra to the imperfect or partly illuminated shadow which often surrounds the umbra. Umbra rarely and penumbra often are used in extended senses, the former implying a complete overshadowing or eclipse, the latter denoting the marginal region or border between areas which are themselves clearly one thing or the other, or in which the exact differences between one thing or another are so obscure as not to be clearly discernible

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his memory was eclipsed in the umbra of a more compelling personality— Cobb

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physiology having rudely investigated its phenomena upon the same level as other biological processes, it [love] has been stripped of the mystical penumbra in whose shadow its transcendental value seemed real, though hid— Krutch

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the great ordinances of the Constitution do not establish and divide fields of black and white. Even the more specific of them are found to terminate in a penumbra shading gradually from one extreme to the other— Justice Holmes

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Adumbration applies to something that is so faint or obscure a figure, sketch, or outline of something which actually exists or is to come that it serves as a foreshadowing of it or a hinting at it

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the lugubrious harmony of the spot with his domestic situation was too perfect for him, impatient of effects, scenes, and adumbrations— Hardy

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if the Parthenon has value, it is only as an adumbration of something higher than itself— Babbitt

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Analogous words: darkness, dimness, obscurity (see corresponding adjectives at DARK): *shelter, cover, retreat

Contrasted words: brightness, brilliancy, radiance, effulgence (see corresponding adjectives at BRIGHT): glare, glow, blaze (see under BLAZE vb)

2 ghost, spirit, specter, *apparition, phantasm, phantom, wraith, revenant

3 *blind, shutter

4 tint, *color, hue, tinge, tone

5 *gradation, nuance

Analogous words: distinction, difference (see DISSIMILARITY): *touch, suggestion, suspicion, soupçon, dash, tinge

6 *touch, suggestion, suspicion, soupçon, tinge, smack, spice, dash, vein, strain, tincture, streak

Analogous words: *trace, vestige: tint, tinge (see COLOR)