Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Dark and gloomy.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Dark; gloomy.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Dark; gloomy; dusky; tenebrious.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Dark and gloomy.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective dark and gloomy

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French tenebreus, from Latin tenebrōsus, from tenebrae, darkness.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Anglo-Norman tenebrous (earlier tenebrus) from Latin tenebrōsus, itself from tenebrae ("darkness, shadows").

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Examples

  • She is gifted a lesson on Napoleon's maxim — "force equals mass times velocity" — and corrected in her pronunciation of "tenebrous," which, says Black, should be "ten-E-brous."

    Shades of Black The Nag 2006

  • She is gifted a lesson on Napoleon's maxim — "force equals mass times velocity" — and corrected in her pronunciation of "tenebrous," which, says Black, should be "ten-E-brous."

    Archive 2006-12-01 The Nag 2006

  • He has been so little read that four specimens of his different manners -- the early "tenebrous" style of _The

    A History of Elizabethan Literature George Saintsbury 1889

  • The skin on my back broke open and I looked sideways at the tenebrous wings that sprung forth.

    Crossed J.F. Lewis 2011

  • Wings of tenebrous leather tore through my T-shirt, and my fangs and claws became disproportionate to my size as I turned into the uber vamp.

    Crossed J.F. Lewis 2011

  • How-ha grunted, and yielded up the obedience she could not withhold; though, as she went down the stairs to the door, in a tenebrous, glimmering way she wondered that the accident of white skin or swart made master or servant as the case might be.

    CHAPTER 19 2010

  • Wings of tenebrous leather tore through my T-shirt, and my fangs and claws became disproportionate to my size as I turned into the uber vamp.

    Crossed J.F. Lewis 2011

  • In the context of this exhibition, the shift is announced in a tenebrous work by Vittore Belliniano, a very obscure artist, but also a very good one, who has learned all that is most important from Giorgione and Giovanni Bellini regarding the breathing, lifelike depiction of the human face and form.

    The Man of Sorrows Motif Over Time James Gardner 2011

  • The skin on my back broke open and I looked sideways at the tenebrous wings that sprung forth.

    Crossed J.F. Lewis 2011

  • “The Fiddler of Bayou Teche” by Delia Sherman is Southern fantasy with a tenebrous twist.

    Books in 2009, #12 pabba 2009

Comments

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  • darkness is tenebrous

    August 13, 2007

  • "dark and gloomy"

    August 13, 2007

  • And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul.

    -Heart of Darkness (Conrad)

    March 19, 2011