PORTEND

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does portend mean? 

• PORTEND (verb)
  The verb PORTEND has 1 sense:

1. indicate, as with a sign or an omen

  Familiarity information: PORTEND used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PORTEND (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they portend    ... he / she / it portends   
Past simple: portended   
Past participle: portended   
-ing form: portending   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Indicate, as with a sign or an omen

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Synonyms:

augur; auspicate; betoken; bode; forecast; foreshadow; foretell; omen; portend; predict; prefigure; presage; prognosticate

Context example:

These signs bode bad news

Hypernyms (to "portend" is one way to...):

bespeak; betoken; indicate; point; signal (be a signal for or a symptom of)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "portend"):

threaten (to be a menacing indication of something)

foreshow (foretell by divine inspiration)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s something

Derivation:

portent (a sign of something about to happen)

 Context examples 

A fetal/maternal condition that is risky and portends complications for the mother and/or fetus, when compared to a normal pregnancy.

(High Risk Pregnancy, NCI Thesaurus)

Dangers to ancient Antarctic ice portend a future of rapidly rising seas, but a new study may relieve one nagging fear.

(Reframing the dangers Antarctica's meltwater ponds pose to ice shelves and sea level, National Science Foundation)

What do these sounds portend?

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

What does this portend?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Seated round it were a dozen or so folk, of all ages and conditions, who set up such a shout as Alleyne entered that he stood peering at them through the smoke, uncertain what this riotous greeting might portend.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

One great excellency in this tribe, is their skill at prognostics, wherein they seldom fail; their predictions in real diseases, when they rise to any degree of malignity, generally portending death, which is always in their power, when recovery is not: and therefore, upon any unexpected signs of amendment, after they have pronounced their sentence, rather than be accused as false prophets, they know how to approve their sagacity to the world, by a seasonable dose.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)