Other forms: omens
An omen is something that happens and gets read as a message about what is coming. A black cat crossing your path, a bird trapped in the kitchen, rain on the morning of a wedding.
An omen points forward, always: it is the sign before the event, never the event itself. It takes OF when you name what is coming — an omen of disaster, an omen of change — and it takes a side: a good omen, a bad omen, an ill omen. The adjective is ominous, and ominous has hardened into pure dread, so an ominous silence is never a promising one. People use omen half-seriously now, about football results and job interviews, and it keeps its full weight in stories about fate. An omen also needs a reader: a thing becomes an omen because somebody decides it is one.
1nounomenA thing that happens and is taken as a sign of what is going to happen, good or bad.
“The sailors took the flat water as an omen and refused to leave port.”
omen is a sign.
Omen came into English straight out of Latin with its spelling untouched. Latin omen meant a foreboding — a sign of what was on its way — and English borrowed the whole word rather than reshaping it, which is why it still looks Latin sitting in an English sentence.
Latin
ōmen — foreboding, omen
English, today
omen
From Latin ōmen (“foreboding, omen”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA