How to Use portent in a Sentence

portent

noun
  • Black cats can be portents of bad luck.
    — Randall Colburn, Entertainment Weekly, 27 Nov. 2025
  • Perhaps as a portent, the sun poked through the clouds for her race.
    — Steve Brand, San Diego Union-Tribune, 30 Nov. 2025
  • The attack would not be a one-off event, but a portent of what’s to come.
    — Aluf Benn, Foreign Affairs, 7 Feb. 2024
  • Somewhere in there was portent.
    — Literary Hub, 30 Mar. 2026
  • The first thing on the menu, a $6 thick slice of milk bread, is a portent of what’s to come.
    — Soleil Ho, San Francisco Chronicle, 11 June 2021
  • His victory lap is an outrage—and a grim portent of things to come.
    — Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 1 Dec. 2021
  • Even so, the fulfillment of the nightmare has me in the grip of its portent.
    — Lisa Wells, Harper's magazine, 10 Apr. 2019
  • Many see this, like the Starbucks many years before, as a dark portent.
    — Angela Helm, The Root, 3 Aug. 2017
  • This year could be a portent of even more extreme, seashore-ruining, events.
    — Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY, 17 June 2023
  • For a while all anyone could talk about, in tones of portent and doom, was what the baby might be missing.
    — Patricia Lockwood, The New Yorker, 23 Nov. 2020
  • Thus a look into the past becomes a chilling portent of the future.
    — Bill Goodykoontz, The Arizona Republic, 27 June 2022
  • That said, the Koch feud is a portent of more fractures in the party system.
    — Daniel Henninger, WSJ, 8 Aug. 2018
  • On opening night, the pools were dyed blood-red, a portent of critical carnage to come.
    — Dana Goodyear, The New Yorker, 5 Oct. 2020
  • His removal makes our nation less secure and is a terrible portent for what's to come.
    — Michael Gfoeller and David H. Rundell, Newsweek, 16 Jan. 2025
  • The days are shorter, the sunlight is cooler, dilemmas deepen, and the air is crisp with portent.
    — Beth Segal, cleveland, 17 Sep. 2020
  • The astonishing night two skate propelled him to fifth overall -- off the medal stand but a portent of things to come.
    — Mark Osborne, ABC News, 3 Feb. 2022
  • Perhaps the troubling signs Roiphe detects are portents of a dark future.
    — Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, 16 Feb. 2018
  • That is why the 10 percent trim in performances for next season is a portent of what’s to come.
    — Zachary Woolfe, New York Times, 1 Jan. 2023
  • For those who looked, there were signs and portents of core Democratic policies pushed offstage.
    — Andrew Cockburn, Harper's Magazine, 5 Sep. 2024
  • That seemed a portent of more to come as the June primary inches ever closer.
    — Mark Z. Barabak, Mercury News, 25 Feb. 2026
  • That seemed a portent of more to come as the June primary inches ever closer.
    — Los Angeles Times, 22 Feb. 2026
  • To many, the dam isn’t just about electricity, but a portent of a glorious future.
    — Washington Post, 15 Oct. 2020
  • In the shadows of the long-hut, the elders muttered among themselves—of portents and crops and weather and the storage of grain.
    — Maggie O’Farrell, Literary Hub, 2 June 2026
  • After Astroworld, many noted that the rampant gate-crashing could have been seen as a portent of what was to come.
    — Chris Willman, Variety, 14 Feb. 2022
  • In 2018, that monopoly was assailed by signs and portents.
    — Literary Hub, 18 May 2026
  • Audience members in the first three rows were provided with plastic rain ponchos, a portent of the mess to come.
    — Barbara Ellis, The Know, 23 Oct. 2019
  • And the portents were not just in Henderson’s and Nuzzo’s paper.
    — David Zweig, The Atlantic, 17 Apr. 2025
  • The company’s example was seen by many as a portent of the AI future.
    — Geoff Colvin, Fortune, 12 Apr. 2026
  • The fight over this provision, with more than $1 trillion at stake over a decade, is a portent of the bruising broader battle ahead.
    — Gerard Baker, WSJ, 29 Sep. 2017
  • The land disputes wouldn’t be settled for years to come — a portent of the role that real estate has played in the state throughout its history.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 24 Dec. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'portent.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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