0 a part of a shadow in which only some of the light is blocked, used especially about a shadow made during an eclipse: --
We have witnessed a display of openness conducted in a strange penumbra of secrecy.
Indeed, the district rate covers only the penumbra of services.
I do not want to see any such penumbra effect for 16 and 17-year-olds.
The penumbra of patronage is even more dangerous than the patronage itself.
These borderline cases comprise a "penumbra of uncertainty" with respect to the applicability of a general term; it is this penumbra of uncertainty that forms the term's open texture.
Dworkin's critique, in its new and reduced guise, reinstates the core/penumbra distinction that has always been to the liking of positivists.
There is an inherent inaccuracy in this method in that the penumbra impedes the accuracy to which the beam edge and subsequent centre of the field can be determined.
Following a stroke there is a region surrounding the core of the insult known as the penumbra zone in which the tissue can survive for a period of time.