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OMINOUS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Presaging ill fortune
Example:
a by-election at a time highly unpropitious for the Government
Synonyms:
ill; inauspicious; ominous
Classified under:
Similar:
unpropitious (not propitious)
Derivation:
omen (a sign of something about to happen)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Threatening or foreshadowing evil or tragic developments
Example:
the situation became ugly
Synonyms:
baleful; forbidding; menacing; minacious; minatory; ominous; sinister; threatening
Classified under:
Similar:
alarming (frightening because of an awareness of danger)
Derivation:
omen (a sign of something about to happen)
Context examples:
Jane! recommenced he, with a gentleness that broke me down with grief, and turned me stone-cold with ominous terror—for this still voice was the pant of a lion rising—Jane, do you mean to go one way in the world, and to let me go another?
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
When one of them is born, it is reckoned ominous, and their birth is recorded very particularly so that you may know their age by consulting the register, which, however, has not been kept above a thousand years past, or at least has been destroyed by time or public disturbances.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Three billion miles away on the farthest known major planet in our solar system, an ominous, dark storm – once big enough to stretch across the Atlantic Ocean from Boston to Portugal – is shrinking out of existence as seen in pictures of Neptune taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
(Hubble Sees Neptune's Mysterious Shrinking Storm, NASA)
When they came near with their ominous hands, he got up.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
Or—already ominous and terrible possibilities began to form round that unknown land.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
There was something ominous about it, and in intangible ways one was made to feel that the worst was about to come.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
The great black tower upon which they stood rose like a last island of refuge amid this sea of fire but the ominous crackling and roaring below showed that it would not be long ere it was engulfed also in the common ruin.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I knew enough of Mr. Micawber by this time, to foresee that he might be expected to recover the blow; but my night's rest was sorely distressed by thoughts of Traddles, and of the curate's daughter, who was one of ten, down in Devonshire, and who was such a dear girl, and who would wait for Traddles (ominous praise!) until she was sixty, or any age that could be mentioned.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
This ominous tool she presented to Miss Scatcherd with a respectful curtesy; then she quietly, and without being told, unloosed her pinafore, and the teacher instantly and sharply inflicted on her neck a dozen strokes with the bunch of twigs.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Along the white surface of the dusty highway there was drawn a long smear of crimson, while beside this ominous stain there lay a murderous little pocket-bludgeon, such as Warr had described in the morning.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
