ominous

I

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

adj. inauspicious, bodeful, fateful. See warning, prediction, threat. Ant., unthreatening.

II

(Roget's IV) modif.

Syn. foreboding, portentous, threatening, forbidding, fateful, baleful, menacing, sinister, dark, black, lowering, suggestive, ever-threatening, premonitory, dire, direful, ill-omened, grim, gloomy, haunting, perilous, ill-starred, ill-fated, impending, looming, fearful, clouded, unpropitious, inauspicious, unlucky, forewarning, foreshadowing, presaging, prophetic, of evil portent, apocalyptic; see also dangerous 2 , dismal 1 , doomed , frightful 1 , oracular 2 , sinister .

Ant. favorable*, encouraging, auspicious.

Syn.- ominous implies a threatening character but does not necessarily connote a disastrous outcome [ the request was met by an ominous silence ] ; portentous may imply a foreshadowing, esp. of evil, but is now more often used of that which arouses awe or amazement because of its prodigious or marvelous character [ a portentous event ] ; fateful may imply a fatal character or control by fate, but is now usually applied to that which is of momentous or decisive significance [ a fateful decision ] ; foreboding implies a portent or presentiment of something evil or harmful [ a foreboding anxiety ]

III

(Roget's 3 Superthesaurus) (VOCABULARY WORD) a.

[OM un us]

pertaining to omens, portentious, foreboding.

A dark cloud on the horizon is particularly ominous to one on a sailboat.

SYN.: portentious, foreboding, dreadful, prophetic, menacing, boding evil, inauspicious, threatening, sinister, cautionary.

ANT.: boding well, encouraging, heartening, reassuring

IV

(Roget's Thesaurus II) adjective Portending future disaster: apocalyptic, apocalyptical, baneful, dire, direful, fateful, fire-and-brimstone, grave2, hellflre, portentous, unlucky. See LUCK, WARN.