How to Memorize

adumbrate - outline

Analysis

To ‘adumbrate’ is to describe roughly or provide vague advance indications about something that will happen in the future. Therefore it can be used to intimate or partially outline something. This formal word is most commonly encountered in academic and political writing.

Example(s)

1. I asked Mary to adumbrate the objectives of the project in an official report.

2. The mild unrest we saw in that country a few years ago proved to be an adumbration of the full-blown crisis we see today.

3. Before we adumbrate a strategy for dealing with the issue, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page about what needs to be done.