penumbra
Example Sentences
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The lighter one, called the penumbra, will not have too much effect but the umbra, the inner and darker shadow, will darken the Moon.
From BBC ● Sep. 17, 2024
But the Earth also casts a wider, and lighter, shadow, called the penumbra, which extends away from the planet at an angle.
From Slate ● Apr. 5, 2024
The penumbra of Broadway stardust she radiated accumulated over decades.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 30, 2024
While lit with the penumbra of a spotlight aimed elsewhere, he coolly mimed the smoking of a cigarette with a kazoo.
From New York Times ● Jun. 16, 2023
The late afternoon sun was behind his back, so that he glowed at the edges — shadow, penumbra.
From "Typical American" by Gish Jen
Her steps became feebler, and she strained her eyes to look afar upon the naked road, now indistinct amid the penumbrae of night.
From Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
From the top of the terrace he gazed upon this vague form standing up like a phantom in the penumbrae of the evening.
From Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert
When the ascending currents are powerful, they create those appearances which astronomers designate the nuclei, the penumbrae, the faculae.
From The Story of the Herschels by Anonymous
On a December day in the foothills near Seattle, walking into the sun southward and nearly blinded, all you can see are penumbras of emerald-green moss along the vertical edges of the trunks.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 18, 2022
Rigging raises a sheet, in front of and behind which the dancers play with shadows, misshapen ones with extra auras and penumbras.
From New York Times ● Sep. 11, 2022
I have been studying the Constitution very carefully, including the emanations of the penumbras, and I can see why people might think there was some inherent right to dinner.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 8, 2022
That opening space sequence functions as supernal ballet, with various vessels spinning, rotating along unfamiliar axes, pirouetting in a post-atmospheric dance of grace against a backdrop of penumbras.
From Slate ● Aug. 6, 2018
The deputy pivoted in the direction of the doorway and shouted at a featureless face broken up in equidistant penumbras by four bars, “Who’s there?”
From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy
Vocabulary lists containing penumbra
Eclipse Vocabulary
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Roe v. Wade (1973)
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