(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.
Vanity
Definition:
(n.) The quality or state of being vain; want of substance to satisfy desire; emptiness; unsubstantialness; unrealness; falsity.
(n.) An inflation of mind upon slight grounds; empty pride inspired by an overweening conceit of one's personal attainments or decorations; an excessive desire for notice or approval; pride; ostentation; conceit.
(n.) That which is vain; anything empty, visionary, unreal, or unsubstantial; fruitless desire or effort; trifling labor productive of no good; empty pleasure; vain pursuit; idle show; unsubstantial enjoyment.
(n.) One of the established characters in the old moralities and puppet shows. See Morality, n., 5.
Example Sentences:
(1) With most big stars, the vanity and the power and the money take over.
(2) She believes her explorations – of their vanities, their blindnesses, their cruelties, of the brief moments in which they attain goodness, or glimpse a kind of realistic, unselfish love – to be of urgent importance.
(3) Aesthetic surgery crosses the dividing line between surgery for reconstruction and alteration of deviations (which do not in themselves constitute objective deformities) and is sometimes even performed without medical indication, but just for the gratification of individual vanity.
(4) So how did Vanity Fair decide to illustrate this heartfelt and rather astonishing interview?
(5) Using various self-report indices of these constructs we found that (a) defensive self-enhancement is composed of two orthogonal components: grandiosity and social desirability; (b) grandiosity and social desirability independently predict self-esteem and may represent distinct confounds in the measurement of self-esteem, (c) narcissism is positively related to grandiose self-enhancement (as opposed to social desirability), (d) narcissism is positively associated with both defensive and nondefensive self-esteem, and (e) authority, self-sufficiency, and vanity are the narcissistic elements most indicative of nondefensive self-esteem.
(6) "I've got a few men I respect very much and one would be Frank Gehry ," Pitt told Vanity Fair.
(7) Vanity Fair's contributing editor, Sarah Ellison, said Abramson was eminently prepared for the top job.
(8) A correlational analysis of the 7-factor components of the NPI (Authority, Exhibitionism, Superiority, Vanity, Exploitativeness, Entitlement, and Self-Sufficiency) and the MMPI validity, clinical, commonly scored, and content scales suggests that the seven NPI components reflect different levels of psychological maladjustment.
(9) By the time the guests have their fill of caviar-stuffed potatoes and get in their limos to the Vanity Fair party across town, most are sufficiently well lubricated to deal with one another: I walk in to see Benedict Cumberbatch standing by the bar with Joan Collins, while Patrick Stewart and Jared Leto are expressing mutual admiration for one another nearby.
(10) Janine di Giovanni is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and the author of Ghosts by Daylight (Bloomsbury).
(11) But also, how cool that you are all talking about that.’” The film has opened to mainly negative reviews, with the Guardian’s Henry Barnes feeling that the compromises Emmerich has made “ leave Stonewall feeling neutered ” while Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson called it “ alarmingly clunky ”.
(12) Vanity Fair and the New Yorker have said they will not host parties either.
(13) Condé Nast's Vanity Fair was the worst performer among the big name titles in the sector in print, reporting sales of 81,344, down 8% period-on-period and 16.8% year-on-year.
(14) In a rare interview with Vanity Fair, the Oscar-winning director of Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown and The Pianist said the arrest hit him harder than any incident since the murder of his wife Sharon Tate by the Manson family in 1969, as well as the subsequent media circus that followed.
(15) It’s about vanity and a desire to splash the cash.
(16) You got to love the Tories they're happy to spend taxpayers money (the've increased debt by £555 billion since George Osborne took office in 2010, ) on big vanity projects.
(17) I also believe that it is cruel to take a baby away from its mother.” In a 2005 Vanity Fair interview on the subject, Dolce said he would love an “entire football team” of children, but: “I have the small handicap of being gay so having a child is not possible for me.” They refer constantly to their business as their baby.
(18) When the case came to court, Mr Justice Eady refused to allow Vanity Fair to give the jury the full details of the 1977 attack.
(19) Prince undertook a six-month tour to promote 1999, where he was joined on the bill by his proteges the Time and a new all-female group, Vanity 6, the latter seemingly an embodiment of Prince’s sexual fantasies.
(20) Sometimes, it seems, calling oneself a feminist is a personal act of vanity, with no wider resonance – witness Louise Mensch the feminist , Theresa May the feminist and, most fantastically, Margaret Thatcher the feminist, even though her supporters will happily tell you that the woman stood for no one but herself.