How to Use portent in a Sentence

portent

noun
Definition of portentnext
Synonyms for portentnext
  • The first thing on the menu, a $6 thick slice of milk bread, is a portent of what’s to come.
    — Soleil Ho, San Francisco Chronicle, 11 June 2021
  • The Brazilian’s chance was a portent of what was to come.
    — Samindra Kunti, Forbes, 24 Feb. 2021
  • Even so, the fulfillment of the nightmare has me in the grip of its portent.
    — Lisa Wells, Harper's magazine, 10 Apr. 2019
  • The first portent of imminent death is that flies cease to fly...
    — Neuroskeptic, Discover Magazine, 19 Dec. 2017
  • That said, the Koch feud is a portent of more fractures in the party system.
    — Daniel Henninger, WSJ, 8 Aug. 2018
  • The skull felt like a portent, but also a turning point.
    — Brian Groh, Star Tribune, 27 Oct. 2020
  • Many see this, like the Starbucks many years before, as a dark portent.
    — Angela Helm, The Root, 3 Aug. 2017
  • For a while all anyone could talk about, in tones of portent and doom, was what the baby might be missing.
    — Patricia Lockwood, The New Yorker, 23 Nov. 2020
  • Thus a look into the past becomes a chilling portent of the future.
    — Bill Goodykoontz, The Arizona Republic, 27 June 2022
  • The teamsheet, however, was an ominous portent of things to come...
    — SI.com, 31 Oct. 2019
  • His victory lap is an outrage—and a grim portent of things to come.
    — Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 1 Dec. 2021
  • That is why the 10 percent trim in performances for next season is a portent of what’s to come.
    — Zachary Woolfe, New York Times, 1 Jan. 2023
  • Amanda Zieve’s lighting also adds to the sense of portent.
    — (jim Carmody), San Diego Union-Tribune, 9 June 2019
  • The days are shorter, the sunlight is cooler, dilemmas deepen, and the air is crisp with portent.
    — Beth Segal, cleveland, 17 Sep. 2020
  • On opening night, the pools were dyed blood-red, a portent of critical carnage to come.
    — Dana Goodyear, The New Yorker, 5 Oct. 2020
  • The astonishing night two skate propelled him to fifth overall -- off the medal stand but a portent of things to come.
    — Mark Osborne, ABC News, 3 Feb. 2022
  • These crackdowns are, on their own, a portent of the ways in which the Chinese state seeks to extend the hegemony of Mandarin.
    — Gina Anne Tam, Foreign Affairs, 19 Sep. 2023
  • This year could be a portent of even more extreme, seashore-ruining, events.
    — Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY, 17 June 2023
  • The characters in Snake Eyes always seem to be in climax-speak mode; even the most throwaway lines are steeped in portent.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 23 July 2021
  • Buried in the 2006 Newsweek article is a glib definition of the ‘id’ that today reads like a portent.
    — Warren Breckman, New Republic, 1 June 2017
  • After Astroworld, many noted that the rampant gate-crashing could have been seen as a portent of what was to come.
    — Chris Willman, Variety, 14 Feb. 2022
  • Perhaps the troubling signs Roiphe detects are portents of a dark future.
    — Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, 16 Feb. 2018
  • The storms seemed an ill portent for the very first Falcon 9 rocket, which the SpaceX launch team had moved to the company’s new pad only a day before.
    — Eric Berger, Ars Technica, 3 June 2020
  • The fight over this provision, with more than $1 trillion at stake over a decade, is a portent of the bruising broader battle ahead.
    — Gerard Baker, WSJ, 29 Sep. 2017
  • The land disputes wouldn’t be settled for years to come — a portent of the role that real estate has played in the state throughout its history.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 24 Dec. 2020
  • The sack was seen as a portent—of the end of the empire or even, as some apocalyptic Christian writers saw it, the end of God’s earthly creation.
    — Cullen Murphy, The Atlantic, 9 June 2020
  • Yet Maserati promises that the MC20 isn't an abstract halo car but a portent for the more attainable models as well.
    — Ezra Dyer, Car and Driver, 25 Mar. 2022
  • His findings held all the ominous portent of a line from a Tommy Lee Jones disaster movie: Um, guys, why are all the roads rising?
    — Bruce Barcott, Outside Online, 25 Aug. 2011
  • But awards season obsessives still look to the annual boozy affair for portents of what may (or may not) be ahead at the Oscars.
    — Nate Jones, Vulture, 4 Jan. 2024
  • That grim demonstration against Kissinger, in other words, seems to have been the portent of a two-front culture war—for the land, but also for the state apparatus—which has yet to be decided.
    — Jordan Castro, Harper's Magazine, 9 Jan. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'portent.' 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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