a. (sb.) [a. OF. tenebrus (11th c.), mod.F. ténébreux, Pr. tenebros, Sp., It. tenebroso, ad. L. tenebrōs-us TENEBROSE.]
1. Full of darkness, dark.
c. 1420. ? Lydg., Assembly of Gods, 1169. Tyll Cerberus Had hem beshut withyn hys gates tenebrus.
c. 1489. Caxton, Blanchardyn, xxxii. 121. A tenebrouse & derke dongeon.
c. 1530. Ld. Berners, Arth. Lyt. Bryt. (1814), 204. The aduentures of the Tenebrous, or Darke Tower.
1608. R. Johnson, Seven Champions, II. T iv. Therewith drewe on the darke and tenebrous night.
1725. Bradley’s Fam. Dict., s.v., Vertigo, The other they call Scotomia, or Tenebrous Vertigo, when the Eyes are darkned and, as it were, cover’d with a Cloud.
1847. Longf., Ev., II. ii. 29. Over their heads the towering and tenebrous boughs of the cypress Met in a dusky arch.
b. fig. Obscure, gloomy.
1599. Nashe, Lenten Stuffe, Wks. (Grosart), V. 220. To … run astray … raking out of the dust-heape or charnell house of tenebrous eld, the rottenest relique of the monuments.
a. 1693. Urquhart’s Rabelais, III. xvii. 137. Heraclitus, the grand Scotist, and tenebrous darksome Philosopher.
1823. New Monthly Mag., VIII. 13. The most tenebrous holes and corners of their author’s obscurity.
1849. Blackw. Mag., LXV. 307. Even in that tenebrous philosophy which he has imported … he is very much at fault.
† 2. as sb. Darkness. Obs. rare–1.
c. 1450. Lovelich, Grail, lvi. 418. At ȝoure Castel there is Swich tenebrowse, that No man there Other May se.
Hence Tenebrousness (rare–0), darkness.
1727. in Bailey, vol. II.
