penumbra
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /pəˈnʌm.bɹə/
enpr: pĭ-nŭm'brə
Forms: form: penumbras
form: penumbrae
form: penumbræ
form: pænumbra
Etymology: From New Latin pēnumbra, from Latin paene (“almost”) + umbra (“shadow”).
Senses: examples: text: The other places see the penumbra of the moon's shadow fall on the earth, so the eclipse is partial, and part of the sun's disc is still visible.
ref: 2011, Galen C. Duree, Jr., Optics for Dummies, Wiley Publishing, Inc., published 2011, →ISBN, page 61:
text: In the boiling temperature of 119 ° F – the hottest they had experienced so far – they watched as the penumbra of Venus blurred its outline at the precise moment the disc crossed the sun.
ref: 2011, Frank McLynn, Captain Cook: Master of the Seas, Yale University Press, published 2011, →ISBN, page 112:
text: The part of the moon that remains in the penumbra receives some direct sunlight, and the glare is usually great enough to prevent your seeing the faint coppery glow of the part of the moon in the umbra.
ref: 2012, Michael A. Seeds, Dana E. Backman, Horizons: Exploring the Universe, Brooks/Cole, published 2012, →ISBN, page 37:
glosses: A partially shaded area around the edges of a shadow, especially an eclipse.
topics: astronomy
natural-sciences
glosses: A region around the edge of a sunspot, darker than the sun's surface but lighter than the middle of the sunspot.
examples: text: These firms or businesses are not illegal in the strict sense, but there is a shadowy penumbra within which they live, and it is often convenient for the government to look the other way.
ref: 1998, Debraj Ray, Development Economics, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, pages 346–347:
text: […] God chose to descend into the realm of human imperfection, where the light of truth is spare and must exist in the penumbra of partial knowledge mixed with partial ignorance.
ref: 2010, Denis Farkasfalvy, Inspiration and Interpretation: A Theological Introduction to Sacred Scripture, The Catholic University of America Press, published 2010, →ISBN, page 188:
text: Unlike some of his contemporaries Parkes never implied that the Irish were close, in the racial hierarchy, to black, condemned to some racial penumbra, between black and white; but nor, given Catholic exclusion from the given traditions of his native radicalism, were the Irish white in the same way that he was.
ref: 2011, Bill Schwartz, The White Man's World, Oxford University Press, published 2011, →ISBN, page 136:
glosses: An area of uncertainty or intermediacy between two mutually exclusive states or categories.
examples: text: Whilst the orthodox, de-charismatized churches steadily lose influence and support and the new cults develop, in the religious penumbra there have persisted, during the last century, echoes of charisma.
ref: 1975, Bryan R. Wilson, The Noble Savages: The Primitive Origins of Charisma and Its Contemporary Survival, Quantum Books, published 1975, →ISBN, page 116:
text: But for all the expansionist energy of a metro area that sprawls from Wisconsin to Indiana (total population: 7.2 million), downtown Chicago and its penumbra also stand rejuvenated.
ref: 1986, John McCormick, “Chicago Bounces Back”, in Newsweek, volume 108, page 42:
text: Some are accounts of the latest advances, but too many are in that weary penumbra of science inhabited by sociologists, who wander like children in a toyshop, playing with devices they scarcely understand.
ref: 2000, Steve Jones, The Language of Genes, Flamingo, →ISBN, page xv:
glosses: An area that lies on the edge of something; a fringe.
examples: text: The foregoing [United States Supreme Court] cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.
ref: 1965, William O. Douglas, Griswold v. Connecticut, United States Reports, 381 U.S. 479
glosses: Something related to, connected to, and implied by, the existence of something else that is necessary for the second thing to be full and complete in its essential aspects.
topics: medicine
sciences
qualifier: preceded by "ischaemic"
glosses: A region of the brain that has lost only some of its blood supply, and retains structural integrity but has lost function.
raw_tags: after a stroke
Synonyms: sense: area of uncertainty or intermediacy
word: grey area
sense: area that lies on the edge of something
word: periphery
sense: area that lies on the edge of something
word: outskirt
Derived terms: penumbral
penumbrous