shadowy

UK/ˈʃæd.əʊ.i/US/ˈʃæd.oʊ.i/

adjectiveB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,482 of 15,258neutral

Shadowy means full of dark patches, or mysterious and little known. A shadowy corner, a shadowy figure, a shadowy organisation.

The figurative sense is much the commoner in reporting, where a shadowy group is one nobody can name the members of. A shadowy figure is the standard phrase in every witness statement.

Definitions of shadowy

1adjectiveshadowyFull of dark patches, or mysterious and little known.B1+
“The old house had shadowy corners where the lamplight didn't reach.”

shadowy is a quality.

Where it comes from

From shadow plus -y, with shadow from Old English sceadu, shade.

Middle English
schadwy
English, today
shadowy

From Middle English schadwy, schadowy, equivalent to shadow + -y.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

shadowy in the wild

Despite his shadowy recorded history Octa made an impact on the Britons, who describe his deeds in several sources.
Octa of Kent
The shadowy broad-nosed bat (Platyrrhinus umbratus) is a species of bat in the family Phyllostomidae.
Shadowy broad-nosed bat
The paper also features South Australia's only remaining anonymous columnist, the shadowy Ray Light.
City Messenger
Drasteria adumbrata, the shadowy arches, is a moth of the family Erebidae.
Drasteria adumbrata
At sea one does not expect or look for it, but here, with fluttering leaves, shadowy forest aisles, house-tops barely visible, it is expected.
Life on the Mississippi· Mark Twain

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

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