1 (literary) important as a sign or a warning of sth that is going to happen in the future, especially when it is sth unpleasant:
a portentous dream / sign
2 (formal, disapproving) very serious and intended to impress people:
a portentous remark / voice
portentously adverb:
She frowned portentously to add weight to her suggestion.
portentousness noun [U]
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
Where does this definition of portentous come from?
This entry for portentous is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is portentous a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, portentous is tagged as adjective.
Does portentous appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — portentous appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
