Sample sentences for PORTENT - verbalworkout.com

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Definition

a sign of something about to happen

portents = signs of things about to happen

The first, the very first: I found it a splendid portent.
Henry James -- The Turn of the Screw

portent = a sign of something about to happen

These are portents; but yet I hope, I hope, They do not point on me.
William Shakespeare -- Othello, the Moor of Venice

portents = signs of something about to happen

There had been no signs or portents, no secret signals.
Jane Yolen -- The Devils Arithmetic

portents = indicators or signs of what was going to happen

Would anyone like me to help them interpret the shadowy portents within their Orb?
J.K. Rowling -- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

portents = signs of things about to happen

Then the plane was overhead, its shadows passing over the open glade, the throbbing reaching its maximum of portent.
Ernest Hemingway -- For Whom the Bell Tolls

portent = a sign of something about to happen

Three dead trees on the moor below, burned up alive by lightning, are ominous portents.
John Gardner -- Grendel

portents = signs of something about to happen

And these does she apply for warnings and portents
And evils imminent; and on her knee
Hath begg'd that I will stay at home to-day.
William Shakespeare -- Julius Caesar

portents = signs of something to come (in Shakespeare's day, more specifically referring to signs indicating the approach of evil or calamity)

The drive to El Puerto was always a pleasant one, but today it was filled with strange portents.
Rudolfo Anaya -- Bless Me, Ultima

portents = signs of things about to happen

portents = signs of something to come (in Shakespeare's day, more specifically referring to signs indicating the approach of evil or calamity)

The movements of the planets and the mysterious portents they reveal only to those who understand the steps of the celestial dance.
J.K. Rowling -- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

portents = signs of things about to happen

Giants and other portents on the borders of the Shire were forgotten for more important matters:
J.R.R. Tolkien -- The Fellowship of the Ring

portents = signs of things about to happen

This departure from truth on the part of a most honest hobbit was a portent of great significance.
J.R.R. Tolkien -- The Hobbit

portent = a sign of something about to happen

The dawn is beginning to announce itself, but there is something in the air that belongs to the night. A stillness that is a portent, a gathering, a coming together of something akin to a storm.
August Wilson -- The Piano Lesson

portent = a sign of something about to happen

No human being can create new runes, or draw the sort of runes Clary can. Only angels have that power. And since Clary can do that—well, it seems like a portent. Things are changing. The Laws are changing. The old ways may never be the right ways again.
Cassandra Clare -- City of Glass

portent = a sign of something about to happen

But did your reverence hear of the portent that was seen last night?
Nathaniel Hawthorne -- The Scarlet Letter
Who could have foreseen from it these fearful portents which seemed to threaten violence and discord among the dwellers in The Wilderness?
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -- Beyond the City
They stood perplexed before him as if before a dreadful portent.
Joseph Conrad -- The Secret Agent
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.
Charlotte Bronte -- Jane Eyre
the crew singing for joy, that so promising an event should so soon have falsified the evil portents preceding it.
Herman Melville -- Moby Dick

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