a. [f. (? mod.L. tenebrific-us, f.) L. tenebræ darkness: see -FIC.] Causing or producing darkness; obscuring. (In quot. 1785 loosely for ‘dark, gloomy.’)
Tenebrific stars or constellations: see TENEBRIFICOUS.
1773. Monthly Rev., XLVIII. 306. But of all our three new elements, most copiously and satisfactorily could we discourse, in our Author’s manner, on the nature, properties and laws of the tenebrific principle, or the element of darkness.
1785. Burns, Ep. to Davie, x. It lightens, it brightens, The tenebrific scene.
1825. Carlyle, Schiller, III. (1873), 99. Its interpreters with us have been like ‘tenebrific stars.’ Ibid. (1827), Misc. Ess., St. Germ. Lit. (1840), I. 92. These are its ‘tenebrific constellation,’ from which it ‘doth ray out darkness’ over the earth.
1848. Lowell, Biglow P., Poems 1890, II. 113. Grammar, a topic rendered only more tenebrific by the labors of his successors.
1858. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., IV. i. I. 383. Books done by pedants and tenebrific persons under the name of men.
1868. Browning, Ring & Bk., III. 789. Now begins The tenebrific passage of the tale.
So Tenebrificate v. rare, trans. to darken, obfuscate; † Tenebrificous a. Obs., tenebrific.
c. 1743. in Mem. Eliz. Carter (1808), II. 147. The complete science of circumlocution, and the whole art of confounding, perplexing, puzzling, and *tenebrificating a subject.
16[?]. ‘W. Ramsey’ (quoted in Spectator: see next quot.). There are tenebrificous and dark stars, by whose influence night is brought on, and which do ray out darkness and obscurity upon the earth as the sun does light.
1714. Spect., No. 582, ¶ 5. I could mention several Authors who are tenebrificous Stars of the first Magnitude.
1852. K. H. Digby, Compitum, VI. 8.
