How to Use portentous in a Sentence

portentous

adjective
  • Bad as smash-crash-bash can be, portentous smash-crash-bash is far worse.
    — Mark Feeney, BostonGlobe.com, 14 June 2023
  • Two years ago, even a month ago, such a minor symptom would not have seemed portentous.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 8 Aug. 2021
  • But there was still something portentous about a large whale stranding.
    — National Geographic, 9 Apr. 2018
  • These days, a delay of minutes can feel eternal and portentous.
    — Emily Bobrow, WSJ, 4 Dec. 2018
  • Like the Gordy scene, this could be a portentous sequence in a much more critical film.
    — Paul A. Thompson, Pitchfork, 27 Apr. 2026
  • Another is about death itself and the portentous ride to the other side.
    — Sezin Devi Keohler, Entertainment Weekly, 7 Mar. 2026
  • The first sentence sounds the alarm in a portentous poetic rhythm (The fight is here).
    — Susan J. Wolfson, The Atlantic, 18 June 2022
  • Could this be another portentous sign?
    — Caleb Harris, Austin American Statesman, 19 Mar. 2026
  • The book, which came out in Sweden in 2018, feels portentous in so many ways.
    — Zibby Owens, Washington Post, 16 Mar. 2020
  • This portentous graveyard of classicizing form is in part a dark joke at the artist’s expense.
    — Nancy Princenthal, New York Times, 16 May 2024
  • This is a portentous touch, but the poem describes feelings that can arise every winter.
    — Richard Brookhiser, National Review, 19 Dec. 2019
  • Call it cinema’s most portentous let.
    — Joe Reid, Vulture, 29 Aug. 2025
  • Here, too, what was once pioneering and portentous already looks quaint.
    — Justin Davidson, Curbed, 19 Mar. 2026
  • There are plenty of meaningful looks, but just not enough meaning to sustain this heavy, portentous tone.
    — Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times, 27 Jan. 2022
  • Her singing voice is a magisterial thing — epic and portentous, even a little scary.
    — Owen Myers, EW.com, 30 June 2022
  • That job — conveying portentous urgency — would have to fall to the novel’s prose.
    — Joan Frank, Washington Post, 12 July 2023
  • It was first published in 1966, the year of my birth, which struck me as terribly portentous.
    — Brooke Nagler, Longreads, 7 Apr. 2022
  • Muad’Dib is also the name for a little rodent that hops around their desert, which is why the movie has a lot of portentous shots of a cute mouse.
    — Jackson McHenry, Vulture, 19 Oct. 2021
  • But the phrase feels more portentous than exhilarating, given the source.
    — Rachel Syme, The New Yorker, 15 Aug. 2022
  • That portentous claim launches one last spectacular scene that would make Crichton proud.
    — Ron Charles, Washington Post, 12 Nov. 2019
  • Further testing showed the portentous bump in the data to be just a statistical anomaly.
    — Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine, 22 Nov. 2016
  • The first is to speak in the hushed, portentous tones that have signified Serious Blockbusters for decades.
    — Nate Jones, Vulture, 1 Mar. 2024
  • The Cuban slugger also included his usual array of bat flips and portentous pauses at the plate.
    — Molly Blue, OregonLive.com, 15 Oct. 2017
  • The dimming of the light means a cooling of temperatures, and a portentous lick of wind may come up as the eclipse reaches totality.
    — Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 18 Aug. 2017
  • Like other major moments in the film, the tension is heightened by Ishaan Chhabra’s thrilling, portentous score.
    — Deborah Young, The Hollywood Reporter, 13 Nov. 2017
  • For all her strengths, Campbell does have one conspicuous weakness, for the form of the overheated and portentous quote.
    — Scott Anderson, New York Times, 5 Sep. 2017
  • The portentous use of music, lighting and extremely shallow focus makes the proceedings feel heavy.
    — Michael Ordoña, Los Angeles Times, 28 Oct. 2020
  • The interlude gave body and soul a brief respite from all the portentous solemnity of a ceremony that marched in time to tradition but at times felt out of step with this world.
    — Peter Marks, Washington Post, 6 May 2023
  • With the agility of a dolphin, that pig sailed (mostly) over the electric wire, dragging just a little bit of his portentous belly across it and barging through the barbed wire fence.
    — Lauren Ritchie, OrlandoSentinel.com, 26 Mar. 2018
  • The Cuban slugger also included his usual array of creative bat discards and portentous pauses at the plate.
    — USA TODAY, 14 Oct. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'portentous.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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