How To Use Portentous In A Sentence
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And the tremendous skull of the great hog of Oakham hung, a portentous ivory overmantel, with a Chinese jar in either eye socket, snout down above the fire ....
The Food of the Gods and how it came to Earth
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Society-wide measures of religious behavior muffle portentous change that may be occurring at the younger edge of the population, so social prognosticators just like commercial advertisers focus on trends among young adults, trying to discern which aspects of behavior are what they are because the youths are young, and which aspects are what they are because of when they are young.
American Grace
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As if fulfilling the portentous predictions of some medieval soothsayer, the first year of this new century has witnessed an unprecedented catalogue of warnings of the cumulative effects of climate change.
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As the portentous millennium approached, evangelical thoughts turned to the long-awaited Second Coming of Christ and thence to Armageddon.
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Last month the judges -- bleary-eyed from reading 130 nominated books each -- attacked publishers for submitting works they called "portentous," "pretentious" and "pompous.
Eyes On The Prize
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Instead, they became even brassier, the graphics still more explosively portentous, the panics more moral.
It's a good week for … Britain
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Her face was fixed on her, through the night; she was the creature who had escaped by force from her cage, yet there was in her whole motion assuredly, even as so dimly discerned, a kind of portentous intelligent stillness.
The Golden Bowl — Complete
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The problem with the book is that it sometimes descends into portentous philosophizing.
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The dinner stood, but there was a desire already more powerful than the appetite for shows, already more efficient in turning the man’s mind away from his grim prepossession with his past than any theatre could be, and that was an enormous curiosity and perplexity about this Boomfood and these Boom children — this new portentous giantry that seemed to dominate the world.
The Food of the Gods and how it came to Earth
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The same might be said of slow-moving animation that aims at portentous but achieves boring.
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Don't go getting the impression that Demonstration is at all pompous or portentous, though.
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Lou gently lay Bev's hand back on the mattress and bowed his head with a solemnity that Nora thought both tender and portentous.
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The book opens with a haunting and portentous prologue that simultaneously catalyses the twin narrative strands of the novel, presages its thematic concerns and gives a first taste of the dark symbolism with which it is heavily laden.
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The scene is grim and portentous, and a sense of foreboding looms.
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The mood is more playful than portentous.
Times, Sunday Times
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Wasn't this apocalyptic comment portentous with all the flooding and massive tidal waves around Thailand and the Indian Ocean?
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portentously, the engines began to roll
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The programme even opens with a theatrically portentous pre-credits teaser, an appetising foretaste of the bloodshed to come.
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The report contains numerous portentous references to a future environmental calamity.
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The idiocy, and it is perennial, is to look at polls three or six or nine months out and make these pretentious and portentous conclusions before any human being has voted.
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In social politics, too, the city's contribution to 20th century thought and culture was no less portentous.
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On the 1st of March he complained of frequent vertigoes, which made him feel as though he were intoxicated; but no effectual means were taken to remove these portentous symptoms; and he regularly enjoyed his daily exercise, sometimes in boats, but oftener on horseback.
The Life of Lord Byron
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In social politics, too, the city's contribution to 20th century thought and culture was no less portentous.
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The performances were as cartoonishly ridiculous as men with humiliating hair saying portentous things to a 'green screen' generally are.
Times, Sunday Times
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Because of its longevity as a shaper of the partisan landscape, changes in abortion attitudes are especially portentous.
American Grace
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First they declare portentously that the European club is in deep "crisis" and unable to function.
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The physiognomy of the city and the bearing of its inhabitants share the portentous aspect of a drama.
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She frowned portentously to add weight to her suggestion.
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We also went through a spate of "millennial" thinking, that quirky habit of the mind which finds special significance in numbers of years, and gets exaggerated as the numbers become portentous.
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The film blends documentary and fiction, but the attempts at actual documentary, via old photos and a portentous narration, aren't worth the trouble.
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What made words (or at least particular kinds of words such as oaths) seem so threatening and portentous?
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She was inclined to think that the thing sounded more portentous than amusing.
Emily Fox-Seton
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Waal," Pete had rejoined, with a portentous wink at the boys, "you never kin tell in this wale of tears what you're a-goin 'up aginst -- queer shapes, fer instance.
The Border Boys Across the Frontier
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He has staked out his claim for being a great critic through portentousness, pomposity, and extravagant pretension, and, from all appearances, seems to have achieved it.
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At that portentous word, which always preluded a long story, the Abbot broke in.
The Monastery
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The title track tries to deflate its portentous musical backing of crashing cymbals and thunderous pianos with daft lyrics about needing a new eiderdown and some binoculars.
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The portentous original plan was to make three trilogies and so far we've been subjected to all three of the middle trilogy and, more recently, two of the first.
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He would delight them equally by his anecdotes of witchcraft, and of the direful omens and portentous sights and sounds in the air…
The Haunted
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It is from this point of observation that our humour is suddenly made aware of the startling absurdity of human institution; and not only of _human_ institution; for it is made aware also of the absurdity of the whole fantastic scheme of this portentous universe.
Suspended Judgments Essays on Books and Sensations
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Looking back, the designation appears and sounds absurdly portentous.
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The portentous dignities bestowed upon officials and sympathizers were partly for Roman consumption, setting him up as arbiter of status and palace-based master of the city.
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She was inclined to think that the thing sounded more portentous than amusing.
Emily Fox-Seton
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Yes, this has been what you might call a portentous evening," agreed
The Motor Girls Through New England or, Held by the Gypsies
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It is unoriginal, portentous and entirely pointless.
Times, Sunday Times
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The camera tracked around them portentously as they sat at glowing laptops in a dimly-lit smoky room and, bit by bit, revealed the purported secret of Christie's success.
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He delights in tracing similarities of metaphor, suggestive accidents of fate, portentous parallels, uncanny coincidences, and unexpected connections.
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Now I write it down the scene does seem awfully portentous.
Times, Sunday Times
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The two sides of the vale were so near, that at every double of the river the shadows from the western sky fell upon, and totally obscured, the eastern bank; the thickets of copsewood seemed to wave with a portentous agitation of boughs and leaves, and the very crags and scaurs seemed higher and grimmer than they had appeared to the monk while he was travelling in daylight, and in company.
The Monastery
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The present aspect of society is portentous of great change.
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Titchmarsh just isn't programmed for portentous, monumental declamation.
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It is also portentous, pretentious and sententious.
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While the bold sweep of the band's ambition seemed impressive at the time, such portentous complexities now seem quaint and rather naive.
Times, Sunday Times
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From his fierce eyes there shone forth portentous fire: and once in high Calydon he slew the destroying beast, the fierce wild boar with gleaming tusks.
Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, and Homerica
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The decision to allow infant baptism is described as portentous: a dramatic sign which foreshadows something.
The problem of infant baptism
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It would not have surprised me to learn that I must subtract at least half a dozen syllables from that portentous phrase to reduce it to alexandrine dimensions.
The Guermantes Way
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The mood is more playful than portentous.
Times, Sunday Times
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He is finely convincing in his portentous and lengthy narration, which can be wearisome if the words are enunciated less clearly than here.
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Answer: Workshop worker can hide below car, machine tool and loftier equipment, not portentous fluster runs.
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Recent developments are as portentous as the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
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In fewer than 100 pages, we travel from a haunted garden to the very gates of hell, via ominous encounters, portentous conversations and moments of absurd levity.
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Instead of sounding profound and portentous, there was an edge of pomposity.
Times, Sunday Times
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A sidesman, with an air of portentous gravity, as one who, in opening doors, performed an office more on behalf of the Deity than the worshippers, was usually at hand to usher the party in.
Simon Called Peter
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Louis surveyed me with his shrewd gray eyes and shook his head portentously.
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As in his previous film, Central Station, another road movie and a great one, Salles doesn't try to lyricize landscapes or fill them with portentous menace or serenity.
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They shared, according to Tacitus, a war orientated Teutonic lifestyle with a veneration for the portentous powers of sage women and a predilection for feasting and drinking to excess.
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This is all very solemn and portentous, but it's impossible to shake the feeling this is a virtuoso example of preaching to the converted.
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Albertson's recent paintings in both oil and gouache continue to feature contorted, hyper-eroticized figures enacting portentous traditional scenes amid the most vulgar trappings of popular culture.
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While we study the pictures we are assaulted by an overblown, portentous, bombastic Bernard Herrmann score that borders on self-parody.
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such a portentous...monster raised all my curiosity
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The Guardian's weekly supplement, which bears the portentous title Society, is the font of public-sector employment, the spring whereat the civic-minded slake their thirst for righteous subsidy.
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A sulphury light filled the flat, and the first heavy raindrops splashed portentously on the sill beyond the sitting-room window.
DEATH SPEAKS SOFTLY
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Ugly as they are, I'm finding lots of useful material - old commercials, sound effects, peculiar remarks, portentous musical cues.
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All those successes in the early part of his career seemed portentous.
Times, Sunday Times
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In social politics, too, the city's contribution to 20th century thought and culture was no less portentous.
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The problem with the book is that it sometimes descends into portentous philosophizing.
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The portentous first page of text does not mention the artist, whose engraved image floats within an oval frame on the facing page.
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Either plump to excess or excessively lean; either parlously young or portentously old; — the medium is mawkish. —
Peer Gynt
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Watching breathlessly; and for a termless second or two a profound and portentous silence descended on the camp.
The Sky Line of Spruce
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Right from the portentous and pretentious but utterly muddled opening voice-over that quite inadequately sets the stage, this movie is an embarrassment of unintentional laughs.
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In social politics, too, the city's contribution to 20th century thought and culture was no less portentous.
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The physiognomy of the city and the bearing of its inhabitants share the portentous aspect of a drama.
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Music that has a megalomaniac quality, that creates a portentous grandiosity without much in the way of inner self-reflexivity.
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I see those evil, portentous eyes and that ropelike watching gaze.
Krzystof Kamil Baczynski
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The first half of the movie is full of dreadful portentous moments that either go nowhere or end in cheap shocks.
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These flowers combine every virtue, the portentous groan of brass, the blackish sheen of crimson: to the eye, the crushable texture of velvet, but to the fingertip, the bruise of baby skin.
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Meanwhile, the royal cachinnation was echoed out by a discordant and portentous laugh from behind the arras, like that of one who, little accustomed to give way to such emotions, feels himself at some particular impulse unable either to control or to modify his obstreperous mirth.
The Fortunes of Nigel
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Whereas, on the other hand, emanating as they do from the infinite wisdom and mercy of God, formulated in the shape of positive precepts, and corroborated by the portentous manner of their promulgation, those principles acquire an undisputed authority, remove every doubt, illumine the mind with unexpected sublime truths, satisfy the heart which finds them consentaneous with its own feelings, and are thus more apt to accomplish the objects towards which they are directed.
A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth
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With nonsense verse, he demonstrated his unique world view, recorded the social situation of his time and displayed his objection to the Victorian seriousness and portentousness.
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If the United Workers Party brass read the portentous signs, none was man enough to call their leader away from his Independence Day preparations and warn him of the gathering storm clouds.
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The report contains numerous portentous references to a future environmental calamity.
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Rabelaisian ditty, a gross amazing jest, a chuckle of deep Satyric humour; -- and the monstrous "thickness" of Life, its friendly aplomb and nonchalance, its grotesque irreverence, its shy shrewd common-sense, its tough fibres, and portentous indifference to "distinction"; tumbles us over in the mud -- for all our "aloofness" -- and roars over us, like a romping bull-calf!
Visions and Revisions A Book of Literary Devotions
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In the process, what could have been a portentous freak show of rural grotesques became a memorable portrait of painful family fissures.
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The captured instant often takes on meanings far more portentous than the actual event.
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Friedman, an unalloyed idealist when it comes to capitalism, and concomitantly (he supposes) a rampant technophile, is suddenly sober and portentous when it comes to Iraq.
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Recent developments are as portentous as the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
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Harris's great skill lies in pulling back every time her creation veers towards the portentous, that is to say the Tolkienesque ....
Runemarks: Summary and book reviews of Runemarks by Joanne Harris.
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The mood is more playful than portentous.
Times, Sunday Times
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The images, mostly breathtaking-horrifying aerial shots of an alternately lunar and conflagrant post-Gulf War Kuwaiti landscape, are at least strictly documentary; the formal framework, however-including various pieces of classical music; XIII portentously titled chapters; and a Herzog voiceover filled with vague destruction-myth proclamations ( "And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell") - suggests post-apocalyptic fiction.
Culture Guide
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The phrases evoke both the portentousness of a movie script and the gnomic meter of haiku.
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Mrs. Nation's whole name is Carrie Amelia Nation, but having noticed from old records that her father wrote the first name "Carry," she now does the same, and considers the name portentous as concerns what she is trying and means to do.
The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation
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Now young men goofing around are immortalized as misogynist maulers, portentous reminders to the rest of us that the gender wars won't end until irreverence and humor are dead.
Amy Siskind: Did Sexism Fell Kathleen Parker?
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The stage is cluttered with a lowering, ruined urban landscape that seems to be suggesting all kinds of portentous stuff that the play simply doesn't.
Times, Sunday Times
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Miller had the advantage of having seen the play in the early 90s, when it was momentous and portentous.
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And yet the imminent launch of Destiny feels almost as portentous as its name.
The Sun
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His rhetoric is humorless and portentous - he always sounds to me like a slightly demented Episcopal bishop.
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She was inclined to think that the thing sounded more portentous than amusing.
Emily Fox-Seton
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The story has been simplified to the level of a cartoon, the music is portentous and the lyrics are more risible than profound.
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The judging panel decried previous Booker choices as being ‘pompous, portentous and pretentious’, and promoted Waters and her fellow nominees as the writers truly deserving of attention.
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Forget everything you know about TV news - the portentous opening line, the handoff to your anchormate, the ominous toss to the reporter on remote.
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MasterChef's use of deeply portentous music in the background only adds to this.
Times, Sunday Times
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After a portentous prologue, the film shifts five years ahead, showing him in his new position as lieutenant in the citizen police force.
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It starts out OK, with a portentous and intriguing set up, but gets steadily cheesier and more melodramatic, until the author pulls out a genuine deus ex machina for the ending.
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The captured instant often takes on meanings far more portentous than the actual event.
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An example is the opening scene, in which the portentous water drops and golden filters are far too over-the-top in their attempt to highlight that scene's importance.
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It has an air of dignity and spaciousness which many a more portentous modern countryseat fail to match.
Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain
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She was inclined to think that the thing sounded more portentous than amusing.
Emily Fox-Seton
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His recent momentous, and portentous, decision to say that he doesn't need any more of our money, and that he'll be giving his future material away, will have repercussions for countless artists in later years.
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Nation's whole name is Carrie Amelia Nation, but having noticed from old records that her father wrote the first name "Carry," she now does the same, and considers the name portentous as concerns what she is trying and means to do.
The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation
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Last week Karl-Marx Allee was again treated to the sounds of portentous rhetoric and polite laughter.
