I came across a new word yesterday – adumbrations – which I had to look up in a dictionary as I couldn’t work out its meaning from the context:

Framed in the archway formed by the far end of the vaulted roof were the fantastical forms of five great gasometers, the supporting superstructures of which seemed in their adumbrations to be tangled impossibly with each other, like the hoops of an illusionist’s conjuring trick.

From The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, by Douglas Adams.

According to the Reverso dictionary, adumbration means

1. delineation, draft, indication, outline, rough, silhouette, sketch, suggestion

2. augury, forecast, foreshadowing, foretelling, omen, portent, prediction, prefiguration, prefigurement, presage, prognostication, prophecy, sign

3. bedimming, cloud, darkening, darkness, eclipse, eclipsing, obfuscation, obscuring, overshadowing, shadow

A related word is adumbrate, which means “to outline; give a faint indication of; to foreshadow; to overshadow; obscure.

It comes from the Latin word adumbratus (represented only in outline), from adumbrare (to cast a shadow on), from umbra (shadow) – obvious really!