portentous

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin portentōsus (“strange, unnatural, monstrous, marvellous”), also portentuōsus,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} and partly borrowed from Middle French portentueux (“extraordinary, monstrous, prodigious”), recorded from about 1355, later portenteux.^[2] The Latin adjective is formed from portentum (“omen, sign, monster”), the source of portent, and -ōsus,^[2][6] and that noun is the neuter past participle of portendō (“to foretell, indicate”), originally "to stretch forward",^[3][4] from por- (“forth, forward”), a variant of prō-, and tendō (“to stretch”),^[3][4] from Proto-Indo-European *ten- (“to stretch”).^[3][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Having the nature of a portent, ominous: about 1487, in Skelton's translation of Diodorus Siculus.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged likewise says the 15th century,^[6] but Etymonline says the 1540s and Dictionary.com 1530–40.^[3][8]

Semantic evolution

The Latin adjective leaned towards the strange and monstrous,^[2] and that meaning reached English in 1553 as "prodigious, marvellous, extraordinary", now rare.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined the word as "monstrous; prodigious; foretokening ill", and quoted Shakespeare for the omen and Roscommon for a beast of huge size.^[9] The OED dates the modern sense, "overstated, pompous", from 1805, in William Gifford's notes on Massinger,^[2] whereas the Shorter Oxford puts it in the mid 20th century and sees the influence of pretentious.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 1487 – ominous, threatening.^[2]
• 1553 – prodigious, marvellous, monstrous.^[2]
• 1805 – overstated, grandiloquent, pompous.^[2] The Shorter Oxford says the mid 20th century.^[5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of or being a portent; ominous, or heavy with consequences: a portentous crack in the dam.^[10][6][2]
2. Self-consciously weighty; pompous or overblown: The narrator's portentous tone soon grew tiresome.^[10][6][2]
3. (now rare) Prodigious or marvellous, even monstrous.^[10][6][2]

Word family

• portentously
• portentousness
• unportentous

Related words

• portend
• portent
• pretentious
• tend

Usage notes

The form portentious is found, especially in the sense "pompous", and is put down to pretentious;^[5][3] Merriam-Webster Unabridged records a pronunciation ending in /-chəs/ as one that many regard as unacceptable.^[6] Dictionary.com lists the words portentous and pretentious as often confused.^[8]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins