umbrella definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

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Definitions (13)

American Heritage Dictionary (5)

noun A device for protection from the weather consisting of a collapsible, usually circular canopy mounted on a central rod.
noun Something that covers or protects.
noun Air cover, especially during a military operation.

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Century Dictionary (3)

A portable shade, screen, or canopy which opens and folds, carried in the hand for the purpose of sheltering the person from the rays of the sun or from rain. The name was formerly given to a sort of fan used to protect the face from the sun, but is now applied to a light canopy of silk, cotton, or other cloth, extended on a folding frame composed of bars or strips of steel, cane, etc., which slides on a rod or stick. A small and light form of umbrella, carried by women as a protection from the rays of the sun, often in gay colors, or ornamented with ribbons, lace, etc., is habitually called a parasol. The umbrella had its origin in very remote times in the far East, and in some Asiatic countries it was (and still is) regarded as an emblem of royalty or a mark of distinction. In ancient Greece its use was familiar among women for protection from the sun, and it is frequently represented in vase-paintings and terra-cottas. As a defense from rain or snow it was not used in western Europe till early in the eighteenth century. The word is sometimes used figuratively. Compare cloak. Umbrellaes, that is, things that minister shadow unto them [Italians] for shelter against the scorching heate. Coryat, Crudities, I. 135. Umbrello (Ital. Ombrella), a fashion of round and broad Fans, wherewith the Indians (and from them our great ones) preserve themselves from the heat of the sun or fire; and hence any little shadow, Fan, or other thing wherewith women guard their faces from the sun. Blount, Glossographia (1670). The tuck'd up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides. Swift, A City Shower. The inseparable gold umbrella, which in that country [Burma] as much denotes the grandee as the star or garter does in England. J. W. Palmer, Up and Down the Irrawaddi, p. 90. Moreover, he [Jonas Hanway] is said to have been the first man who made a practice [about 1750] of using an umbrella while walking in the streets of London. Dict. Nat. Biog., XXIV. 313.
In zoology: The gelatinous disk or swimming-bell of an acaleph, as a jellyfish, by the rhythmical contraction and expansion of which the creature swims, taken either with or without the velum. It is usually the largest, most symmetrical, and most coherent part of the jellyfish, from which other parts hang like streamers, either around its margin or from the center of the under surface. If we compare this bell to a woman's sun-umbrella, lined as well as covered with silk, and having a fringe, then the outer or aboral surface is the exumbrella; the inner or under lining surface is the adumbrella, or adoral surface surrounding the mouth, from which large mouth-parts may hang in the position of the stick or handle of the umbrella; the ring of metal which slides up and down the stick may represent the gastric cavity of the creature, and the metal ribs of the umbrella may suggest the radial canals which go out to the circumference. At points around the margin are the series of adradial, perradial, and interradial sense-organs or other appendages, as tentacles, and where these are long and streaming they represent the fringe of the imagined parasol. See cuts under acaleph, Aurelia, Discophora. and Willsia. In … [Discophora], the aboral end of the hydranth is dilated into a disk or umbrella, which is susceptible of rhythmical contractile movements. Huxley, Anat. Invert., p. 118.
In conchology [NL. (Lamarck, 1809).] (1) [capitalized] A genus of tectibranchiate or pleurobranchiate gastropods; the umbrella-shells, as U. umbellata. Also Ombrella. (2) A limpet-like tectibranchiate gastropod of the genus Umbrella or family Umbrellidæ; an umbrella-shell. The umbrellas are very large creatures, wearing a flat limpet on the middle of the back, not immersed in the mantle. P. P. Carpenter, Lect. on [Mollusca (1861), p. 86.

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You will there see a beautiful brown smooth-handled umbrella which is not your property. — Thomas Henry Huxley
Then up popped a descendant of Edmund Halley, the man who discovered the comet; he said the family pronounces its name to rhyme with holly, brolly (as in umbrella), — VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol XIX No 1
It has been suggested that the halo originally represented an umbrella, and there is no reason to doubt that the umbrella was the parent of the state canopy 7. — The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Volume II
The word umbrella comes from the Latin word _umbra_, which means a — Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls
It has been suggested that the halo originally represented an umbrella, and there is no reason to doubt that the umbrella was the parent of the state canopy. — The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Volume II

umbrella

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