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portend
in a sentence

show 62 more with this conextual meaning
  • Tracy studied biochemistry and French as an undergraduate and had gone on to pursue an MD-PhD at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, an intensive eight-year degree that portended a career as a doctor or medical researcher.†   (source)
  • They portended rain and that would be a welcome relief from weeks of parching heat-the kind that suffocates and crawls all over one's body.†   (source)
  • But no one knew and nothing seemed to portend a resolution of the struggle.†   (source)
  • My first role, however, did not exactly portend greatness on stage.†   (source)
  • But these events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America's leadership in the world.†   (source)
  • What do you think it portends?†   (source)
  • Yet another truth portending the inevitable.   (source)
    portending = indicate by signs that something is going to happen
  • I fear the election results portend greater violence in the region.
    portend = indicate for the future
  • Outside, the sky was again dark and cloudy, portending even more rain.†   (source)
  • There was a storm on the way, and the heaviness in the air portended a big one.†   (source)
  • The 13s' first two games had not portended well for their season.†   (source)
  • The watery images may further portend disaster in recalling the myth of Narcissus, who, falling in love with his reflection in the water, attempted to join it and so drowned.†   (source)
  • I thought of my second leave as well, but strangely, I didn't want to think about the third leave, for even then I think I knew what it portended.†   (source)
  • The sky was turning a thickening gray, and heavy clouds were on the horizon, portending the same kinds of thunderstorms common to the coast.†   (source)
  • The best waves were usually early in the morning, and it was one of those clear, blue-sky days portending heat that meant the beach would be packed again.†   (source)
  • I do not know what this portends.†   (source)
  • There was a sultry, heavy feel to the air, portending a storm later that afternoon, and he wondered idly whether Tuck had an umbrella stashed in the house somewhere.†   (source)
  • Where once he'd kept them in his desk, he now found it impossible to go about his daily life without them nearby, even though they portended the end of everything he held dear.†   (source)
  • I started coming to see him, to study his features as he peered at the file, to look for an "aha," followed by a frantic phone call that would portend a visit to my home.†   (source)
  • Dense and full bellied, they portended the type of summer storm common in the South—intense rain for twenty minutes, then slowly clearing skies.†   (source)
  • She could hear a humming of noise far down the street, but what it portended she did not know.†   (source)
  • With a full, if inexact, sense of what portended, she gave to Luck's Lad the title of Eugene, a name which, beautifully, means "well born," but which, as any one will be able to testify, does not mean, has never meant, "well bred."†   (source)
  • I assure you that it is no more fantastic than those troops and that waiting mob whose presence and guilty anger portend something which we dare not even think!†   (source)
  • Then came a day when the chill air portended a snowstorm.†   (source)
  • What did the dark shadow around her portend?†   (source)
  • Something portended evil—something hung in the balance.†   (source)
  • All the men in that saloon who saw the entrance of Las Vegas knew what it portended.†   (source)
  • It portended that there was one stone face too many, up at the chateau.†   (source)
  • But had it not been proven at Umballa that his sign in the high heavens portended War and armed men?†   (source)
  • But all the same he was a marvelously keen and strung and efficient instrument to meet the portending issue.†   (source)
  • The catastrophe as persistently portended by Pilchuck and corroborated by Sprague had at last fallen.†   (source)
  • "Ah—don't I remember her in it!" said Mr. Jackson; adding: "Poor girl!" in the tone of one who, while enjoying the memory, had fully understood at the time what the sight portended.†   (source)
  • But Roberta, her presents and her happy last evening with him put aside in this casual way, and for the first time, too, in this fashion, shook her head negatively, as if to say "Oh, no," but her spirits were heavily depressed and she fell to wondering what this sudden desertion of her at this time might portend.†   (source)
  • Then the stirring memory of the day's adventure, the feeling of the beauty of the night, and a strange, deep-seated, sweetly vague consciousness of happiness portending, were all burned out in hot, pressing pain at the remembrance of Stewart's disgrace in her eyes.†   (source)
  • Joan got to her feet, and with all her woman's soul uplifting and inflaming her she stood ready to meet the moment that portended.†   (source)
  • Oh, it is Milly's!" exclaimed Tom, and he seemed to freeze with the dreadful significance it portended.†   (source)
  • There was a depth of thirty or forty feet to the ground; here was the spot on which he had been standing with Farfrae when Elizabeth-Jane had seen him lift his arm, with many misgivings as to what the movement portended.†   (source)
  • While Kate was wondering within herself what these symptoms of unusual vexation portended, Mr Mantalini put the tips of his whiskers, and, by degrees, his head, through the half-opened door, and cried in a soft voice— 'Is my life and soul there?'†   (source)
  • The knights heard this uncommon document read from end to end, and then gazed upon each other in silent amazement, as being utterly at a loss to know what it could portend.†   (source)
  • I did remark, to be sure, that mounting the stairs made her breathe very quick; that the least sudden noise set her all in a quiver, and that she coughed troublesomely sometimes: but I knew nothing of what these symptoms portended, and had no impulse to sympathise with her.†   (source)
  • What does this portend?†   (source)
  • Almost in the center of it, above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth, its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the enormous and brilliant comet of 1812—the comet which was said to portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world.†   (source)
  • Messala, on the perilous edge of the goal, heard, but dared not look to see what the awakening portended.†   (source)
  • What do these sounds portend?†   (source)
  • What did all this portend, and what portended the swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle behind a servant on horseback, and the conveying away of the said Gabelle (double-laden though the horse was), at a gallop, like a new version of the German ballad of Leonora?†   (source)
  • As Nicholas, struck by this sudden alteration, was wondering what it could portend, the brothers rose together, and the one at the top of the table leaning forward towards the other, and speaking in a low voice as if he were addressing him individually, said: 'Brother Charles, my dear fellow, there is another association connected with this day which must never be forgotten, and never can be forgotten, by you and me.†   (source)
  • What did all this portend, and what portended the swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle behind a servant on horseback, and the conveying away of the said Gabelle (double-laden though the horse was), at a gallop, like a new version of the German ballad of Leonora?†   (source)
  • The end, I think, is what the bird portended— if a true portent—when we wished to cross, the eagle bearing left across the army, beating upward, grappling this great snake, alive.†   (source)
  • Alack, our terrene moon Is now eclips'd,
    And it portends alone The fall of Antony!   (source)
    portends = foretells (tells what will happen)
  • Did that first division, portending a second division, afflict him?†   (source)
  • SIR P: What should these things portend?†   (source)
  • —O, these eclipses do portend these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi.†   (source)
  • What he saith, Portends no other thing than death.†   (source)
  • …or by Palmistry in the lines of the hand; in casuall words, called Omina: Sometimes in Monsters, or unusuall accidents; as Ecclipses, Comets, rare Meteors, Earthquakes, Inundations, uncouth Births, and the like, which they called Portenta and Ostenta, because they thought them to portend, or foreshew some great Calamity to come; Sometimes, in meer Lottery, as Crosse and Pile; counting holes in a sive; dipping of Verses in Homer, and Virgil; and innumerable other such vaine conceipts.†   (source)
  • Why, this is evident to any formal capacity; there is no obstruction in this;—And the end,—What should that alphabetical position portend?†   (source)
  • 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.†   (source)
  • What think you they portend?†   (source)
  • …The laws of heav'n, and what the stars decree; Whom Phoebus taught unerring prophecy, From his own tripod, and his holy tree; Skill'd in the wing'd inhabitants of air, What auspices their notes and flights declare: O say— for all religious rites portend A happy voyage, and a prosp'rous end; And ev'ry power and omen of the sky Direct my course for destin'd Italy; But only dire Celaeno, from the gods, A dismal famine fatally forebodesO say what dangers I am first to shun, What toils…†   (source)
  • True opener of mine eyes, prime Angel blest; Much better seems this vision, and more hope Of peaceful days portends, than those two past; Those were of hate and death, or pain much worse; Here Nature seems fulfilled in all her ends.†   (source)
  • …row of pillars laid On wheels (for like to pillars most they seemed, Or hollowed bodies made of oak or fir, With branches lopt, in wood or mountain felled,) Brass, iron, stony mould, had not their mouths With hideous orifice gaped on us wide, Portending hollow truce: At each behind A Seraph stood, and in his hand a reed Stood waving tipt with fire; while we, suspense, Collected stood within our thoughts amused, Not long; for sudden all at once their reeds Put forth, and to a narrow…†   (source)
  • These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt son and father.†   (source)
  • …parting hence; and see the guards, By me encamped on yonder hill, expect Their motion; at whose front a flaming sword, In signal of remove, waves fiercely round: We may no longer stay: go, waken Eve; Her also I with gentle dreams have calmed Portending good, and all her spirits composed To meek submission: thou, at season fit, Let her with thee partake what thou hast heard; Chiefly what may concern her faith to know, The great deliverance by her seed to come (For by the Woman's seed)…†   (source)
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