penumbra
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: simple
Topics: astronomy
medicine
natural-sciences
sciences
Etymology: From New Latin pēnumbra, from Latin paene (“almost”) + umbra (“shadow”).
Inflected forms:
form: penumbras
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: penumbrae
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: penumbræ
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
plural
form: pænumbra
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
rare
Senses:
gloss: A partially shaded area around the edges of a shadow, especially an eclipse.
pos: noun
examples: [A]ny penumbral fringe that may be detected cannot be well distinguished from the effects of the true penumbræ; […]
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.
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.
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.
gloss: A region around the edge of a sunspot, darker than the sun's surface but lighter than the middle of the sunspot.
pos: noun
examples: The atmosphere was very clear, evidenced by the steadiness with which the mottling of the sun’s surface and the penumbræ of several spots were visible.
The velocities found in the penumbræ of spots generally increase with the distance from the centre of radiation, the motion being zero at some point in the umbra, and accelerating outwards.
gloss: An area of uncertainty or intermediacy between two mutually exclusive states or categories.
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
examples: 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.
[…] 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.
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.
gloss: An area that lies on the edge of something; a fringe.
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
examples: Thank God we are not all cowards, we have not all a low ambition, which would make men shades, pœnumbræ^([sic]) of their fellows.
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.
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.
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.
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
examples: 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.
gloss: A region of the brain that has lost only some of its blood supply, and retains structural integrity but has lost function.
pos: noun
Derived words: penumbral
penumbrous
Translations: