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portentous
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  • The heavy block of its business end made a portentous swishing noise in the night air, and the other boys gathered around as Billy opened the lid of the ice chest and took out the two galvanized steel pails.†   (source)
  • While he would rub Amaranta Ursula's erect breasts with egg whites or smooth her elastic thighs and peach-like stomach with cocoa butter, she would play with Aureliano's portentous creature as if it were a doll and would paint clown's eyes on it with her lipstick and give it a Turk's mustache with her eyebrow pencil, and would put on organza bow ties and little tinfoil hats.†   (source)
  • Wheelock asks portentously, as most of the class begins flipping through its 1993 edition of the book.†   (source)
  • Mandy inquired, stretching herself and yawning portentously.†   (source)
  • Orik started to answer, but then a long, low note of portentous volume reverberated throughout the floor and the ceiling and the air of the room, causing Eragon's bones to vibrate with its force.†   (source)
  • had tolled deep in his memory like a portentous gong.†   (source)
  • No single brief utterance of Lincoln is more portentous than the line he wrote to a federal authority in Louisiana.†   (source)
  • This wasn't at all similar to the portentous feeling that had so often sent him spiraling into searching behavior, chasing after ghosts.†   (source)
  • No enigma, no dignity, nothing classical, portentous, only this —a comic pornographer and a rabble of prostitutes.... PLAYER (acknowledging the description with a sweep of his hat, bowing; sadly) : You should have caught us in better times.†   (source)
  • After a long silence, during which he toyed portentously with some of his skulls, my chief began his briefing.†   (source)
  • Apropos of which, Sophie realized, Bronek was now speaking in the tones of one proud to be privy to portentous tidings.†   (source)
  • The boy's showing up exactly when and where he had seemed portentous—whether portentous of good or bad he could not say.†   (source)
  • Immediately music, portentous and heraldic, is heard†   (source)
  • It must have been a large, beautiful bird with magnificent plumage, but its skeleton, hung like a warning to other fowl, was a portentous reminder that the fishermen were also hunters who killed for pleasure as well as for food.†   (source)
  • We were excited by the portentous reports.
  • As Tom took up the receiver the compressed heat exploded into sound and we were listening to the portentous chords of Mendelssohn's Wedding March from the ballroom below.   (source)
    portentous = sounding excessively important
  • It was Owen, using Tess of the d'Urbervilles as an example, who showed me how to write a term paper, describing the incidents that determine Tess's fate by relating them to that portentous sentence that concludes Chapter Thirty-six—"new growths insensibly bud upward to fill each vacated place; unforeseen accidents hinder intentions, and old plans are forgotten."†   (source)
  • In a world viewed through lenses of paranoia—a pair of distorting spectacles that he had been wearing with good reason for the past day and a half—every falling leaf, every whisper of wind, and every fretwork of shadows was invested with a portentous meaning that, in reality, it did not possess.†   (source)
  • There's nothing the matter with me," Buckheath declared wagging his head portentously, and avoiding her eye.†   (source)
  • Captain Flume had obtained this idea from Chief White Halfoat himself, who did tiptoe up to his cot one night as he was dozing off, to hiss portentously that one night when he, Captain Flume, was sound asleep he, Chief White Halfoat, was going to slit his throat open for him from ear to ear.†   (source)
  • With that portentous introduction, the students grow attentive as the rabbi and his student facilitator, Vida Garcia, a Hispanic third-year resident counselor from San Antonio, Texas, explain the first exercise: cultural pursuit.†   (source)
  • It was a day between seasons, bizarre and somehow portentous, strange with gray clouds and eerie patches of light.†   (source)
  • Someone named H.V. Kaltenborn was uttering one of those prolonged and portentous obituaries—the voice mentioned among other things that Goring had been a drug addict—and Sophie began to giggle.†   (source)
  • ARTHUR BIRLING is a heavy-looking, rather portentous man in his middle fifties, with fairly easy manners but rather provincial in his speech.†   (source)
  • Steadily they rise, not portentous, not threatful.†   (source)
  • Here lay knife, fork and glass, but lengthened, swollen, and made portentous.†   (source)
  • From here they are no more than specks, implacable, patient, portentous.†   (source)
  • Eliza moulded her lips portentously for some time, shaking her head slowly.†   (source)
  • "Literature, literature, Dick," he returned portentously.†   (source)
  • Eliza shook her head portentously for several moments.†   (source)
  • The sun, an hour above the horizon, is poised like a bloody egg upon a crest of thunderheads; the light has turned copper: in the eye portentous, in the nose sulphurous, smelling of lightning.†   (source)
  • How did she exist in that portentous atmosphere where the maid was always removing in a dust-pan the sand that the parrot had scattered, and conversation was almost entirely reduced to the exploits—interesting perhaps, but limited after all—of that bird?†   (source)
  • "My name," she said portentously, with slow emphasis, "is Eliza Pentland, and I represent the Larkin Publishing Company."†   (source)
  • begun five years ago, since he had been in my house too and had left no more trace than he had left in Ellen's, where he had been but a shape, a shadow: not of a man, a being, but of some esoteric piece of furniture—vase or chair or desk—which Ellen wanted, as though his very impression (or lack of it) on Goldfield or Sutpen walls held portentous prophecy of what was to be; —Yes, running out of that first year (that year before the War) during which Ellen talked to me of trousseau (and it my trousseau), of all the dreamy panoply of surrender which was my surrender, who had so little to surrender that it was all I had because there is that might-have-been which is the single rock we clin†   (source)
  • For about five minutes the dancing had some value in itself, then it became very much like acting out some complicated and portentous business in a dream which seems to have a meaning but whose meaning you can't figure out.†   (source)
  • And later, in an expectant pause, he would deepen his arched brows portentously, stare up mockingly under his bushy eyebrows at his expectant audience, and say, in a deep sardonic voice: "And now, I am going to request Brother Gant to favor us with one of his polished and scholarly translations."†   (source)
  • But the strain, instead of relaxing, became portentous.†   (source)
  • A portentous clearness now possessed me.†   (source)
  • Meaningless at first, it gradually became menacing, obnoxious, portentous with evil.†   (source)
  • They all look portentous; but they have nothing to say.†   (source)
  • Louis surveyed me with his shrewd grey eyes, and shook his head portentously.†   (source)
  • Kennicott was yawning, more portentously.†   (source)
  • Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity.†   (source)
  • The lamps across his streets had a portentously elastic swing with them.†   (source)
  • The spirit of mighty days at that portentous moment made its descent on that unknown man.†   (source)
  • "What but the human heart itself?" said the dark-visaged stranger, with a portentous grin.†   (source)
  • 'You have had a portentously long audience of my mother,' said Gowan, as the door closed upon them.†   (source)
  • Mr. Bumble, catching at the inquiry very quickly, shook his head with portentous solemnity.†   (source)
  • 'He's a young man, sure?' said the portentous waiter, fixing his eyes severely on me.†   (source)
  • The Countess was about to justify herself, and this alone was portentous.†   (source)
  • But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture's midst.†   (source)
  • Next the loud mournful whistles, the portentous vibration and the boat, the human idea—is in motion.†   (source)
  • Johnson turned obediently to the door, at the same time, over the cook's shoulder, favouring me with an amazingly solemn and portentous wink as though to emphasize his interrupted remark and the need for me to be soft-spoken with the captain.†   (source)
  • And then I would be obliged to pause for breath; so stifling was the pressure, upon that part of me where it was for ever inscribed, of that name which, at the moment when I heard it, seemed to me fuller, more portentous than any other name, because it was burdened with the weight of all the occasions on which I had secretly uttered it in my mind.†   (source)
  • But they were portentous.†   (source)
  • She was "perfect" to every one: subservient to Bertha's anxious predominance, good-naturedly watchful of Dorset's moods, brightly companionable to Silverton and Dacey, the latter of whom met her on an evident footing of old admiration, while young Silverton, portentously self-absorbed, seemed conscious of her only as of something vaguely obstructive.†   (source)
  • There were the petticoats, brown, decorous, striped, frivolous, solid, flimsy; and she chose, in her abstraction, portentously, and the girl serving thought her mad.†   (source)
  • It was a portentous hour.†   (source)
  • The lieutenant, returning from a tour after a bandage, produced from a hidden receptacle of his mind new and portentous oaths suited to the emergency.†   (source)
  • Tom drew an hour-glass with a full moon and straw limbs to it and armed the spreading fingers with a portentous fan.†   (source)
  • Once established before the grate, and consoling himself for the inadequacy of the dinner by the perfection of his cigar, Mr. Jackson became portentous and communicable.†   (source)
  • But there, there, I mustn't croak, I just wanted to let you know that when you find you can't depend on a lot of these gadding young folks like the Haydocks and the Dyers—and heaven only knows how much money Juanita Haydock blows in in a year—why then you may be glad to know that slow old Aunty Bogart is always right there, and heaven knows—" A portentous sigh.†   (source)
  • No evening I had passed at Bly had the portentous quality of this one; in spite of which—and in spite also of the deeper depths of consternation that had opened beneath my feet—there was literally, in the ebbing actual, an extraordinarily sweet sadness.†   (source)
  • No mere pioneering journal dares meddle with them now: the stately Times itself is alone sufficiently above suspicion to act as your chaperone; and even the Times must sometimes thank its stars that new plays are not produced every day, since after each such event its gravity is compromised, its platitude turned to epigram, its portentousness to wit, its propriety to elegance, and even its decorum into naughtiness by criticisms which the traditions of the paper do not allow you to sign at the end, but which you take care to sign with the most extravagant flourishes between the lines.†   (source)
  • Seeing that her thoughts were elsewhere, Cecil bent towards Lucy and said: "To me it seemed perfectly appalling, disastrous, portentous."†   (source)
  • He asked after you; he told me you had been playing with his daughter—" my mother went on, amazing me with the portentous revelation of my own existence in Swann's mind; far more than that, of my existence in so complete, so material a form that when I stood before him, trembling with love, in the Champs-Elysees, he had known my name, and who my mother was, and had been able to blend with my quality as his daughter's playmate certain facts with regard to my grandparents and their connections, the place in which we lived, certain details of our past life, all of which I myself perhaps did not know.†   (source)
  • Born to the prairies, never far from the sight of the cornfields, Martin was conveyed to blazing lands and portentous enterprises.†   (source)
  • She is the grand-daughter—" he told a string of lies slowly and portentously, "of John D. Rockefeller Mellon.†   (source)
  • It was a pity that I needed once more to describe the portentous little activity by which she sought to divert my attention—the perceptible increase of movement, the greater intensity of play, the singing, the gabbling of nonsense, and the invitation to romp.†   (source)
  • "Écoute!" he cried portentously.†   (source)
  • To one who loves the Florence of Dante and Savonarola there is something portentous in such desecration—portentous and humiliating.†   (source)
  • I preternaturally listened; I figured to myself what might portentously be; I wondered if his bed were also empty and he too were secretly at watch.†   (source)
  • The words had been nothing superficially; but when in the light of deepening experience she had looked into them they had then appeared portentous.†   (source)
  • Or I was attracted by the passage of wild pigeons from this wood to that, with a slight quivering winnowing sound and carrier haste; or from under a rotten stump my hoe turned up a sluggish portentous and outlandish spotted salamander, a trace of Egypt and the Nile, yet our contemporary.†   (source)
  • Her father gives her such a portentously hard-headed reputation, that I have a burning desire to know.†   (source)
  • There was something charmingly cordial and engaging in the manner in which after saying "Now, Handel," as if it were the grave beginning of a portentous business exordium, he had suddenly given up that tone, stretched out his honest hand, and spoken like a schoolboy.†   (source)
  • "Mas'r will go his own way!" said Sam, with rueful submission, at the same time winking most Portentously to Andy, whose delight was now very near the explosive point.†   (source)
  • Then the lama took snuff from a portentous wooden snuff-gourd, fingered his rosary awhile, and so dropped into the easy sleep of age, as the shadow of Zam-Zammah grew long.†   (source)
  • 'I made mention of no names, and I wish to make mention of no names,' said Mr Kenwigs, with a portentous look.†   (source)
  • As Amy returned from her last trip, Mr. Davis gave a portentous "Hem!" and said, in his most impressive manner... "Young ladies, you remember what I said to you a week ago.†   (source)
  • There were such portentous shepherdesses among the Ladies Dedlock dead and gone, he told us, that peaceful crooks became weapons of assault in their hands.†   (source)
  • "If I am not well-informed it shall be by no fault of my own," she would say to herself through the tears that would occasionally glide down her peachy cheeks when she was fairly baffled by the portentous obscurity of many of these educational works.†   (source)
  • But by-and-by Nancy, in her attic, became portentously worse, the supposed tumor having indeed given way to the blister, but only wandered to another region with angrier pain.†   (source)
  • He drew up his rifle, and renewed his aim again and again, still appearing reluctant to fire, No sound was heard from even Brom, during these portentous movements, until Kirby discharged his piece, with the same want of success as before.†   (source)
  • Those allied powers were considerably astonished, when they arrived within a few minutes of each other, to find an unknown lady of portentous appearance, sitting before the fire, with her bonnet tied over her left arm, stopping her ears with jewellers' cotton.†   (source)
  • The red light of the setting sun seemed to have a portentous meaning, with which the alarming bray of the second donkey with the log on its foot must surely have some connection.†   (source)
  • But scarce was this done ere the portentous strength of the Black Knight forced his way inward in despite of De Bracy and his followers.†   (source)
  • As she entered and closed the door on herself, he sank down in a chair, and gazed and sighed and puffed portentously.†   (source)
  • The rest is uncertain, but this is certain; and it is a fact new to the world—a fact fraught with such portentous consequences as to baffle the efforts even of the imagination.†   (source)
  • "I will tell you in your private ear," replied she, wagging her turban three times with portentous significancy.†   (source)
  • Without giving herself time for a second thought, she rushed into the shop, pale, wild, desperate in gesture and expression, scowling portentously, and looking far better qualified to do fierce battle with a housebreaker than to stand smiling behind the counter, bartering small wares for a copper recompense.†   (source)
  • He would delight them equally by his anecdotes of witchcraft, and of the direful omens and portentous sights and sounds in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut; and would frighten them woefully with speculations upon comets and shooting stars; and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely turn round, and that they were half the time topsy-turvy!†   (source)
  • "They had better not dispute that matter with a man who knows better," said the other in a portentous voice, though it seemed deep and sluggish as he who spoke.†   (source)
  • It represented a gaunt, ascetic-looking monk, in a tattered gown and cowl, kneeling with clasped hands and pulling a portentously long face.†   (source)
  • These portentous infants being alarming creatures to stalk about in any human society, the eighteen denominations incessantly scratched one another's faces and pulled one another's hair by way of agreeing on the steps to be taken for their improvement — which they never did; a surprising circumstance, when the happy adaptation of the means to the end is considered.†   (source)
  • He caught the color of what was passing about him, and threw it back more vividly than he received it, but mixed, nevertheless, with a lurid and portentous hue.†   (source)
  • Her subordinates so far complied, as to withdraw their hands from the locks, though the threatening barrels still maintained the portentous levels.†   (source)
  • Wherefore, Mr Pancks said, 'What do you mean by that?' and put his hair up with both hands, in a highly portentous manner.†   (source)
  • Thus the dangers which Bois-Guilbert surmounted, in themselves sufficiently great, became portentous in their narrative.†   (source)
  • Whoever visits some estates there, and witnesses the good-humored indulgence of some masters and mistresses, and the affectionate loyalty of some slaves, might be tempted to dream the oft-fabled poetic legend of a patriarchal institution, and all that; but over and above the scene there broods a portentous shadow—the shadow of law.†   (source)
  • It was, indeed, the collector of water-rates who, regarding Nicholas with a fixed look and immovable countenance, shook hands with most portentous solemnity, and sat himself down in a seat by the chimney-corner.†   (source)
  • The stillness itself seemed a trifle portentous; he reflected however that he had no right to stand listening, and he made his way back to the salon.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Tulliver was frightened; there was something portentous in this mad outbreak; she did not see how life could go on after it.†   (source)
  • If ever a collector had borne himself like a collector, and assumed, before all men, a solemn and portentous dignity as if he had the world on his books and it was all two quarters in arrear, that collector was Mr Lillyvick.†   (source)
  • Imagine a truly respectable and amiable hen, by some portentous anomaly, taking to reflection and inventing combinations by which she might prevail on Hodge not to wring her neck, or send her and her chicks to market; the result could hardly be other than much cackling and fluttering.†   (source)
  • Urbain de Bellegarde was frowning portentously, and Newman supposed he was frowning at poor Valentin's invidious image.†   (source)
  • Quite alarmed at being the only recipient of this untimely visit, and the only spectator of this portentous behaviour, I exclaimed again, 'Pray tell me, Miss Mowcher, what is the matter!†   (source)
  • His hands, large and coarse, were plentifully bedecked with rings; and he wore a heavy gold watch-chain, with a bundle of seals of portentous size, and a great variety of colors, attached to it,—which, in the ardor of conversation, he was in the habit of flourishing and jingling with evident satisfaction.†   (source)
  • Accordingly, his reign was like the course of a brilliant and rapid meteor, which shoots along the face of Heaven, shedding around an unnecessary and portentous light, which is instantly swallowed up by universal darkness; his feats of chivalry furnishing themes for bards and minstrels, but affording none of those solid benefits to his country on which history loves to pause, and hold up as an example to posterity.†   (source)
  • But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which seems like the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with the hinge at one end, instead of one side.†   (source)
  • Releasing the hand by slow degrees, he drew all his fingers through his prongs of hair, so that they stood up in their most portentous manner; and repeated slowly, 'Remember what I say, Miss Dorrit.†   (source)
  • "What may be the distance to the sources of this stream?" demanded Doctor Battius, whose eyes were rolling over the whirling eddies of the current, with a very portentous expression of doubt.†   (source)
  • To all this, Mr Pancks, snorting and blowing in a more and more portentous manner as he became more interested, listened with great attention; appearing to derive the most agreeable sensations from the painfullest parts of the narrative, and particularly to be quite charmed by the account of William Dorrit's long imprisonment.†   (source)
  • But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast.†   (source)
  • Ah, if anything were to happen to her!" cried M. Nioche, clenching his two fists and jerking back his head again, portentously.†   (source)
  • Ellen was interrupted by the same bright vision, which on the preceding day had stayed another scarcely less portentous tumult, by exhibiting itself on the same giddy height, where it was now seen.†   (source)
  • On tiptoe it was destined to remain, however, until afternoon; when Squeers, having refreshed himself with his dinner, and further strengthened himself by an extra libation or so, made his appearance (accompanied by his amiable partner) with a countenance of portentous import, and a fearful instrument of flagellation, strong, supple, wax-ended, and new,—in short, purchased that morning, expressly for the occasion.†   (source)
  • Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox.†   (source)
  • If, in addition to the effect produced by these quaint auxiliaries to his costume, we add the portentous and troubled gleamings of doubt, which rendered his visage doubly austere, and proclaimed the misgivings of the worthy Obed's mind, as he beheld his personal dignity thus prostrated, and what was of far greater moment in his eyes, himself led forth, as he firmly believed, to be the victim of some heathenish sacrifice, the reader will find no difficulty in giving credit to the sensation of awe, that was excited by his appearance in a band already more than half-prepared to worship him, as a powerful agent of the evil spirit.†   (source)
  • She let her eyes rest on his own, and she let him take her hand; but her eyes looked like two rainy autumn moons, and her touch was portentously lifeless.†   (source)
  • But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and far more portentous—why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian's Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind.†   (source)
  • That Himmalehan, salt-sea Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults!†   (source)
  • Whatever superstitions the sperm whalemen in general have connected with the sight of this object, certain it is, that a glimpse of it being so very unusual, that circumstance has gone far to invest it with portentousness.†   (source)
  • And Zeus that instant launched above the field the most portentous of all birds, an eagle, pinning in his talons a tender fawn.†   (source)
  • Because from such arms conquests come but slowly, long delayed and inconsiderable, but the losses sudden and portentous.†   (source)
  •   Black and portentous must this humour prove,
      Unless good counsel may the cause remove.   (source)
    portentous = important in the future
  • let not men say
    "These are their reasons; they are natural";
    For I believe they are portentous things   (source)
    portentous = important signs (of things to come)
  • From his girdle hung a row of seastones which jangled at every movement of his portentous frame and on these were graven with rude yet striking art the tribal images of many Irish heroes and heroines of antiquity, Cuchulin, Conn of hundred battles, Niall of nine hostages, Brian of Kincora, the ardri Malachi, Art MacMurragh, Shane O'Neill, Father John Murphy, Owen Roe, Patrick Sarsfield, Red Hugh O'Donnell, Red Jim MacDermott, Soggart†   (source)
  • Amazement seized
    All th' host of Heaven; back they recoiled afraid
    At first, and called me Sin, and for a sign
    Portentous held me; but, familiar grown,
    I pleased, and with attractive graces won
    The most averse—thee chiefly, who, full oft
    Thyself in me thy perfect image viewing,
    Becam'st enamoured; and such joy thou took'st
    With me in secret that my womb conceived
    A growing burden.†   (source)
  • I think it be no other but e'en so: Well may it sort, that this portentous figure Comes armed through our watch; so like the king That was and is the question of these wars.†   (source)
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