Meaning and example
of momentous or ominous significance
Such a portentous...monster raised all my curiosity
Plain-English interpretation
A prevalence score of 0.718 places portentous in the uncommon range on this site. In practical terms, the word was recognized by about 76.6% of people in the source dataset.
Related words
Similar-prevalence words
desiccateUncommon
- Known by
- 77%
preserve by removing all water and liquids from
diffidentUncommon
- Known by
- 77.3%
showing modest reserve
equanimityUncommon
- Known by
- 77.2%
steadiness of mind under stress
acerbicUncommon
- Known by
- 76%
sour or bitter in taste
compunctionUncommon
- Known by
- 77.3%
a feeling of deep regret (usually for some misdeed)
Source attribution
Brysbaert, M., Mandera, P., McCormick, S. F., & Keuleers, E. (2019). Word prevalence norms for 62,000 English lemmas. Behavior Research Methods, 51, 467-479.
Definitions and related terms are derived from WordNet. This page is part of the curated indexable word set.