Definitions

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

  • noun A dark area, especially the blackest part of a shadow from which all light is cut off.
  • noun The completely dark central portion of the shadow cast by the earth, moon, or other body during an eclipse.
  • noun The darkest region of a sunspot.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The only genus of Umbridæ; the mud-minnows. See minnow. 2 , and Umbridæ. There are two species, respectively of Europe and North America, U. krameri and U. limi.
  • noun [lowercase] A sciænoid fish, Umbrina cirrosa; the umbrine. See cut under Umbrina.
  • noun A shadow or shade.
  • noun Among the Romans, one who went to a feast merely at the solicitation of one invited: so called because he followed the guest as a shadow.
  • noun In algebra, a symbol which, when paired with another, makes the symbol of a quantity. See umbral notation, under umbral.

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

  • noun The conical shadow projected from a planet or satellite, on the side opposite to the sun, within which a spectator could see no portion of the sun's disk; -- used in contradistinction from penumbra. See penumbra.
  • noun The central dark portion, or nucleus, of a sun spot.
  • noun The fainter part of a sun spot; -- now more commonly called penumbra.
  • noun (Zoöl.) Any one of several species of sciænoid food fishes of the genus Umbrina, especially the Mediterranean species (Umbrina cirrhosa), which is highly esteemed as a market fish; -- called also ombre, and umbrine.
  • noun (Bot.) a tree (Phytolacca dioica) of the same genus as pokeweed. It is native of South America, but is now grown in southern Europe. It has large dark leaves, and a somber aspect. The juice of its berries is used for coloring wine.

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

  • noun A shadow.
  • noun astronomy The central region of a sunspot.

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

  • noun a region of complete shadow resulting from total obstruction of light

Etymologies

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

[Latin, shadow.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin umbra ("shadow").

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