tenebrous

English

WOTD – 18 August 2011

Alternative forms

• tenebrious

Etymology

A tenebrous view of the Washington Monument

From Middle English tenebrose, from Anglo-Norman tenebrous (earlier tenebrus), from Latin tenebrōsus, itself from tenebrae (“darkness, shadows”).

Pronunciation

• (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

tenebrous (comparative more tenebrous, superlative most tenebrous)

1. (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

• tenebrously
• tenebrousness

 

Related terms

• Tenebrae
• tenebricose (rare)
• tenebrific
• tenebrificous (obsolete)
• tenebrionid
• tenebrism
• tenebrity
• tenebrize (rare)
• tenebrose
• tenebrosity

 

Translations

dark and gloomy

• Armenian: մռայլ (hy) (mṙayl), մթին (hy) (mtʻin), խավար (hy) (xavar)
• Bulgarian: мрачен (bg) (mračen), сенчест (bg) (senčest)
• Catalan: tenebrós (ca)
• French: ténébreux (fr), obscur (fr)
• German: düster (de), Schatten- (de)
• Hungarian: komor (hu)
• Ido: tenebroza (io)
• Italian: tenebroso (it)
• Latin: tenebrōsus
• Portuguese: tenebroso (pt), trevoso
• Romanian: tenebros (ro), întunecat (ro)
• Russian: мра́чный (ru) (mráčnyj), тёмный (ru) (tjómnyj)
• Spanish: tenebroso (es)

Further reading

• “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

Adjective

tenebrous m (oblique and nominative feminine singular tenebrouse)

1. (Anglo-Norman) Alternative form of tenebrus