PORTENTOUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does portentous mean? 

• PORTENTOUS (adjective)
  The adjective PORTENTOUS has 3 senses:

1. of momentous or ominous significance

2. ominously prophetic

3. puffed up with vanity

  Familiarity information: PORTENTOUS used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PORTENTOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Of momentous or ominous significance

Synonyms:

portentous; prodigious

Context example:

a prodigious vision

Similar:

important; significant (important in effect or meaning)

Derivation:

portent (a sign of something about to happen)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Ominously prophetic

Synonyms:

fateful; foreboding; portentous

Similar:

prophetic; prophetical (foretelling events as if by supernatural intervention)

Derivation:

portent (a sign of something about to happen)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Puffed up with vanity

Synonyms:

grandiloquent; overblown; pompous; pontifical; portentous

Context example:

pseudo-scientific gobbledygook and pontifical hooey

Similar:

pretentious (making claim to or creating an appearance of (often undeserved) importance or distinction)

 Context examples 

"I will tell you in your private ear," replied she, wagging her turban three times with portentous significancy.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

“He's a young man, sure?” said the portentous waiter, fixing his eyes severely on me.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

As Amy returned from her last trip, Mr. Davis gave a portentous "Hem!" and said, in his most impressive manner...

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Challenger had been in the habit of walking off by himself every morning and returning from time to time with looks of portentous solemnity, as one who bears the full weight of a great enterprise upon his shoulders.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

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.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The sight of it, with its bloodstained and ghost-blasted reputation, would in itself have been enough to send a thrill through my nerves; but when the words of my uncle made me suddenly realize that this strange summons was indeed for the two men who were concerned in that old-world tragedy, and that it was the playmate of my youth who had sent it, I caught my breath as I seemed vaguely to catch a glimpse of some portentous thing forming itself in front of us.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

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! are you ill?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

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.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous menacing road of a new decade.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

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.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)