The Oxford Thesaurus An A-Z Dictionary of Synonyms - shadowy adj.

1) dark, shady, bowery, leafy, shaded, gloomy, dusky, dim, Literary bosky: The hotel bar was a shadowy place with pink lights on the tables. 2) vague, dim, dark, obscure, faint, indistinct, indefinite, hazy, ill-defined, unclear, indeterminate: The photograph was too shadowy for us to identify anyone in it. The years before he came to London are part of his shadowy past. 3) spectral, ghostly, phantom, phantasmal, wraithlike, phantasmagoric(al) , illusory, dreamlike, imaginary, visionary, chimerical, hallucinatory, unreal, unsubstantial, fleeting, impalpable, transitory, ethereal, immaterial: He saw shadowy figures lurking near the tomb. The plaintiff's case is shadowy, to say the least. 4) See shady, 2, below.