Difficult Words : Ponderous and Portent





Difficult Words : Ponderous and Portent

Portent (POR tent) n: an omen; a sign of something coming in the future

• The distant rumbling we heard this morning was a portent of the thunderstorm that hit our area this afternoon.

• Stock-market investors looked for portents in their complicated charts and graphs. They hoped that the market's past behavior would give them a clue as to what would happen in the future.

• Portentous is the adjective form of portent, meaning ominous or filled with portent. But it is very often used to mean pompous or self-consciously serious or ominous-sounding. It can also mean amazing or prodigious.

• A portentous speech is not one that you would enjoy listening to.

• A portentous announcement might be one that tried to create an inappropriate sense of alarm in those listening to it.

• Portentous can also mean amazing or astonishing. A portentous sunset might be a remarkable glorious one rather than an ominous or menacing one.



Ponderous (PON dur us) adj: so large as to be clumsy; massive; dull

• The wedding cake was a ponderous blob of icing and jelly beans.

• The fat man was unable to type, because his ponderous belly prevented him from pushing his chair up to his desk.

• The chairman, as usual, gave a ponderous speech that left half his listeners snoring in their plates.



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Reading this list is a great fun, while expanding your vocabulary at the same time. It is meant to help to improve the vocabulary of the visitors, the students (who are preparing for various examinations), the authors, journalists, literati and all other people who are interested in improving their language skills.

By using this page, you can increase your vocabulary faster and more easily than you may realize. You can, in fact, accomplish a tremendous gain in your communication skills in less than two to three months of concentrated effort, even if you go at your own speed of a page a day.

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