shadow

1. 1.

   follow, usually without the person's knowledge

   “The police are shadowing her”

   Broaderfollow
2. 2.

   cast a shadow over

   Synonymsshadeshade off

   Broaderdarken
3. 3.

   make appear small by comparison

   “This year's debt dwarfs that of last year”

   Synonymsovershadowdwarf

   Broaderdominate

Other forms of shadow

plural

shadows·

past tense

shadowed·

present participle

shadowing·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about shadow

What does shadow mean?

shadow means "shade within clear boundaries". That is the primary sense; the word has 12 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in shadow?

shadow has 2 syllables: shad-ow. The stress falls on "shad". In IPA it is /ˈʃæˌdoʊ/.

What is another word for shadow?

Close synonyms include darkness, dark, apparition, phantom, phantasm. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is shadow a common word?

shadow is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with shadow?

17 words rhyme with shadow. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.