umbrageous

[prettygoodword]

umbrageous (uhm-BRAY-juhs) - adj., creating or providing shade, shady, shadowed; apt to take offense.


Which is a bit of a wide split in meanings -- the latter is related to taking umbrage, feeling one has been slighted, is a metaphoric extension of the literal meaning of umbrage, shadow (from Latin umbra), from the image of the feeling that one has been shadowed or eclipsed by another. In use in this form since the 1580s, as umbrage about a century longer.

---L.

Comments

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

And the slang term "Throwing shade" brings it full circle! as in "he threw shade on me!"

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

Yup, the same image cluster -- if not derived from the Latin, then reinventing the metaphor.

---L.