What's the difference between portentous and sinister?

Portentous


Definition:

  • (a.) Of the nature of a portent; containing portents; foreshadowing, esp. foreshadowing ill; ominous.
  • (a.) Hence: Monstrous; prodigious; wonderful; dreadful; as, a beast of portentous size.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) David Moyes' first season in charge of United has been conspicuously torrid one, but a win here tonight would earn him no shortage of goodwill from supporters anxious for portents of better things to come next season.
  • (2) Theranos is a perfect tech company name – it sounds mysterious, Greek and portentous.
  • (3) In the letter written to the papers by 60 leading medical professionals on the first day of the House of Lords debate two weeks ago, they said portentously "the British people do not support the privatisation of the NHS".
  • (4) Even before final results were announced a statement from Romney, who was campaigning in Texas, sought to capitalise on the victory by acclaiming it a portent of what was to come.
  • (5) But the commander made it clear he considered full withdrawal to be a portent of disaster.
  • (6) The portents do not look good for Malaysia's opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim , whose trial on highly dubious sodomy charges draws to a close this week.
  • (7) The advocacy of computer operators' needs by user-welfare groups, universities, labor unions, and government agencies are portents for achieving genuine improvements.
  • (8) Russell Crowe looks on stentorian form as the pre-flood patriarch, reeling from portents of the apocalypse and determined to protect his wife (Jennifer Connelly), his adopted daughter (Emma Watson) and the animals of the world.
  • (9) In previous tournaments that might have been seen as typical of the Murphy’s law that seems to apply to England at international competitions or at least as an ominous portent of things to come.
  • (10) Certain fishes have occasional circulating erythroplastids, conceptually a portent of phylogenetic changes in higher vertebrates.
  • (11) "My older brother Matt did it," he said, portentously, "I have to beat him."
  • (12) 42.5% - show that head injuries are most frequent; however, lesions of shoulders and upper and lower extremities are far more portentous ++ to the affected players in many respects.
  • (13) It is up to Wenger now to prove it was a blip rather than a portent of things to come.
  • (14) The ongoing refugee crisis in Europe is a portent, the last thing China wants to face in its own back yard.
  • (15) Today those theories are Film School 101, and Battleship Potemkin's technique is talked about more than its political portent.
  • (16) He described the Community Shield as being somewhere between a pre-season friendly and a Premier League fixture and he cautioned against it being treated as a portent for the season.
  • (17) These two cases serve to alert the physician that severe hypocholesterolemia is a portentous finding that may be associated both with a wide variety of diseases and with a high mortality rate.
  • (18) Add it all together and the portents are highly encouraging.
  • (19) After a party conference season in which health funding pledges were prominent, and with the NHS set to feature heavily in the runup to the 2015 general election, the byelection is a portent of political battles to come.
  • (20) The portent of these different haemostatic mechanisms upon repair of the endothelial cell wall and neovascularization have yet to be determined.

Sinister


Definition:

  • (a.) On the left hand, or the side of the left hand; left; -- opposed to dexter, or right.
  • (a.) Unlucky; inauspicious; disastrous; injurious; evil; -- the left being usually regarded as the unlucky side; as, sinister influences.
  • (a.) Wrong, as springing from indirection or obliquity; perverse; dishonest; corrupt; as, sinister aims.
  • (a.) Indicative of lurking evil or harm; boding covert danger; as, a sinister countenance.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The committee's findings include that the attacks were not extensively planned by the perpetrators; the intelligence community did a good job of warning about the risk of an attack but a bad job of summarizing the attack when it happened; the state department screwed up by not beefing up security at the mission; nobody blocked any military response; and that the Obama administration was slow to produce a paper trail but was generally not a sinister actor in the episode.
  • (2) He should not try to play political games with the darkest and most sinister chapter of Europe’s history.
  • (3) The American actor played sinister rookie methylamine chemist Todd Alquist in the final season of Breaking Bad.
  • (4) Camille O'Sullivan In 2007, the sinister, humorous gem Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea spread like wildfire just after its opening, and you had to kill to get a ticket.
  • (5) Wenger had complained of a sinister media plot to brainwash Arsenal's home fans, as though they were easily led and swing in the breeze, but it all was sweetness and light as Aaron Ramsey continued his early season swagger.
  • (6) The Chinese government is depicted as benevolent, while the US government manages to be both sinister and useless – typified by the black-clad CIA operatives, one of whom gets beaten up by a Chinese character.
  • (7) The results showed a very good distribution of 100% or 90% in the bronchi principals dexter and sinister.
  • (8) The Velvet Underground’s sinisterly thrilling, entirely unapologetic musical portraits of New York’s gay, drug-taking demimonde must have seemed overwhelming to a British suburban kid in the late 60s.
  • (9) The latest film sees Bond travel from Mexico to the Sahara desert, Italy and the Austrian Alps in pursuit of SPECTRE – an acronym for Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion – the sinister organisation intent on world domination.
  • (10) Sinister individuals in lab coats "advising" from behind the scenes?
  • (11) "But this can be taken out of my hands in a number of sinister ways."
  • (12) The police had handed control of the investigation to Paul Britton, a grandstanding and, in my view, faintly sinister, psychologist.
  • (13) The stories range from the subtly sinister to the outrageously gothic.
  • (14) Other more sinister forces have tried to tap into the widespread hostility towards the banking system.
  • (15) Rumours abound that Trump has had some link to Putin’s sinister finances.
  • (16) This is especially so where its occasional presentation as polypoid lesions of the lower respiratory tract may mimic other more sinister lesions and lead to unwarranted invasive procedures by the unsuspecting clinician.
  • (17) It would be possible to write off the Swartz prosecution (as some have done) as the action of a politically ambitious attorney general, but actually it fits a much more sinister pattern.
  • (18) In retrospect, the movement was not just horrific but often ludicrous in its paranoia: the most "sinister" aspect of one supposed conspiracy, notes the book Mao's Last Revolution , was that even some of its core members appeared unaware of its existence.
  • (19) I don’t know how well thought-through they have been with it.” “You have a medical issue at your home, you call police, you don’t expect it to to be recorded on video forever, and for somebody to come and request [it] and be used against you in some sinister way,” said Gibbons, about the recordings potentially being public record.
  • (20) EL: The first psychiatrist I saw subscribed very much to the same view as my friend and the GP – that my voice (and bear in mind, it's still only a single voice at this time) was a sinister harbinger of something much more serious.