Other forms: portents
A portent is a sign of a great event to come. A portent of disaster, an ill portent, portents in the sky.
It is nearly always of something bad, and comets and eclipses were read as portents for most of history. The related adjective portentous has drifted to mean pompous, which is a separate complaint entirely.
1nounportentA sign of a great event to come.
“The sailors saw the black clouds as a portent of disaster.”
portent is a sign.
Latin portentum comes from portendere, to foretell.
Proto-Indo-European
*per-
Latin
portentum
English, today
portent
Built from
Borrowed from Latin portentum, participle of portendere, from portendō (“to predict, to foretell”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA