verb (used with object)
to darken, overshadow, or cloud.
The Latin root of obumbrate helps clarify this verb meaning 鈥渢o darken, overshadow, or cloud鈥: umbra, 鈥渟hadow, shade.鈥 Obumbrate comes from Latin 辞产耻尘产谤腻谤别 鈥渢o overshadow, shade, darken.鈥 翱产耻尘产谤腻谤别 combines the prefix ob– 鈥渙n, over鈥 (among other senses) and 耻尘产谤腻谤别 鈥渢o shade,鈥 a derivative of umbra. English owes many other words to Latin umbra, including adumbrate, penumbra, umbrage, and umbrella, the latter of which can be literally understood as 鈥渁 little shade.鈥 Obumbrate entered English in the early 1500s.
… that solemn interval of time when the gloom of midnight obumbrates the globe ….
It requires no stretch of mind to conceive that a man placed in a corner of Germany may be every whit as pragmatical and self-important as another man placed in Newhaven, and withal as liable to confound and obumbrate every subject that may fall his way ….
verb (used without object)
to squeal with joy, excitement, etc.
Squee! It鈥檚 easy to hear how this word imitates the sound of a high-pitched squeal. As an expression of joy, excitement, celebration, or the like, squee originates as a playful, written interjection in digital communications in the late 1990s, as in 鈥OMG is in the dictionary. Squee!鈥 By the early 2000s, squee expanded as a verb used to convey such excited emotions: 鈥淭he students squeed when they learned the 亚洲网紅露点 of the Day.鈥
I squeed in happiness when I stole a warrior’s Whirlwind attack and used it against him.
… we’re also going to take a moment to squee about the possibility of Martian microbes.
adjective
extremely small; tiny; diminutive.
In the first of the four adventures of his 1726 satirical novel Gulliver鈥檚 Travels, Jonathan Swift has his narrator, Lemuel Gulliver, shipwrecked on the invented island of Lilliput. Its residents, the Lilliputians, are under six inches high鈥攁nd their smallness is widely interpreted as a commentary on the British politics of Swift鈥檚 day. Lilliputian was quickly extended as an adjective meaning 鈥渆xtremely small; tiny; diminutive,鈥 often implying a sense of pettiness. In the second adventure, Gulliver voyages to an imaginary land of giants, the Brobdingnagians, whose name has been adopted as a colorful antonym for Lilliputian.
The Lilliputian vest was over-the-top 鈥00s style at its finest ….
… miniature things still have the power to enthrall us …. That, at least, is one theory as to why people obsessively re-create big things in Lilliputian dimensions.