foreboding

Of ominous significance; serving as an ill omen; foretelling of harm or difficulty.

Adjective

  1. Of ominous significance; serving as an ill omen; foretelling of harm or difficulty.
    • Blood on the street / Foreboding god complex / She never knew she was next - 2018, “Blood on the Street”, performed by Soulfly:

    Synonyms: inauspicious portentous augurous baleful bodeful boding dire disastrous divine fatal foreboding ill-boding ill-fated ill-omened ill-starred inauspicate nefastous omenic ominous brooding presageful presagious prodigious sinister

Origin

From Middle English forbodyng, vorboding, equivalent to fore- + bode + -ing. Compare German Vorbote (“harbinger, omen”).

Forms

more foreboding most foreboding forboding

Derived

forebodingly forebodingness unforeboding

Noun

  1. A sense of evil to come.
    • To me there is something sad in his life, and sometimes I have a sort of foreboding about him. I don't know why, but I fancy he will have some great trouble—perhaps an unhappy end. - 1876 November, Henry James, Jr.,...
    • A sense of foreboding, the like of which he had never known before, hung heavily on him. - 1956, Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars, page 41:
    • I feel a slight foreboding about going home this year. - 1976 December 25, John Atteridg, “Going Home for the Holidays”, in Gay Community News, volume 4, number 26, page 18:

    Synonyms: augury preboding

  2. An evil omen.

Forms

forebodings forboding

Verb

  1. present participle and gerund of forebode

Forms

forboding