English Dictionary

PORTENT

Pronunciation (US): Play  (GB): Play

IPA (US): 

 Dictionary entry overview: What does portent mean? 

PORTENT (noun)
  The noun PORTENT has 1 sense:

1. a sign of something about to happenplay

  Familiarity information: PORTENT used as a noun is very rare.


 Dictionary entry details 


PORTENT (noun)


Sense 1

Meaning:

A sign of something about to happen

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Synonyms:

omen; portent; presage; prodigy; prognostic; prognostication

Context example:

he looked for an omen before going into battle

Hypernyms ("portent" is a kind of...):

augury; foretoken; preindication; sign (an event that is experienced as indicating important things to come)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "portent"):

auspice (a favorable omen)

foreboding (an unfavorable omen)

death knell (an omen of death or destruction)

Derivation:

portend (indicate, as with a sign or an omen)

portentous (ominously prophetic)

portentous (of momentous or ominous significance)


 Context examples 


Still, now and then, I received a damping check to my cheerfulness; and was, in spite of myself, thrown back on the region of doubts and portents, and dark conjectures.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)



 Learn English with... Proverbs 
"Jove but laughs at lover's perjury." (English proverb)

"The bird who has eaten cannot fly with the bird that is hungry." (Native American proverb, Omaha)

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"The one not dancing knows lots of songs." (Cypriot proverb)



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