Noun
That which portends, or foretoken; esp., that which portends evil; a sign of coming calamity; an omen; a sign.
Source: Webster's dictionaryBehind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work out salvation ... Let us not deceive ourselves: we must elect world peace or world destruction. Bernard Baruch
Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of Opinion - how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history. John Maynard Keynes
Pauperism had become a portent. But its meaning was still anybody's guess. Karl Polanyi
That is to me a far more significant portent than the aggregation of the population in cities, the immense luxury, and the exhaustion of the permanent sources of wealth, all of which combined to sap that very character whose continued existence was necessary for the life of the State. Stanley Baldwin
During the 1960s, the Shanghai of my childhood seemed a portent of the media cities of the future, dominated by advertising and mass circulation newspapers and swept by unpredictable violence. J. G. Ballard
Self-parody is the first portent of age. Larry McMurtry