portend.
To serve as a warning or omen of.
Meaning & usage
To serve as a warning or omen of.
To signify; to denote.
Let it be known that the Rapture portends the End of Days.
Where this word comes from
Borrowed from Latin portendere (“to foretell”), from por- (“forward”) + tendere (“to stretch”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.