foreboding
/fɔɹˈbɔʊdɪŋ/
foreboding noun: a sense of evil to come. Also the present participle and gerund of forebode.
Noun
foreboding (countable and uncountable, plural forebodings)
- 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., chapter XIII, in The American, Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, […], published 5 May 1877, →OCLC, page 229
- 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
- An evil omen.
Adjective
foreboding (comparative more foreboding, superlative most foreboding)
- 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 next2018, “Blood on the Street”, performed by Soulfly
- Synonyms:
- inauspicious, portentous, augurous, baleful, bodeful, boding, dire, disastrous, divine, fatal
Also used as
foreboding is also the present participle and gerund of forebode.
Examples of foreboding in a sentence
- The child walked nervously down the dark, foreboding street.
- A sense of foreboding, almost like a Spidey-sense, tingled at the back of my neck.
- Austere, foreboding, it rises on a stonebound table over a tributary of the Loire.
Synonyms of foreboding
17 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of foreboding
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | forebodings |
| alternative form | forboding |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more foreboding |
| superlative | most foreboding |
Origin of foreboding
From Middle English forbodyng, vorboding, equivalent to fore- + bode + -ing. Compare German Vorbote (“harbinger, omen”).
Words formed from foreboding
Questions about foreboding
- What does foreboding mean?
- Foreboding means a sense of evil to come.
- What part of speech is foreboding?
- Foreboding can be a noun or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce foreboding?
- Foreboding is pronounced /fɔɹˈbɔʊdɪŋ/ (US).
- What is the plural of foreboding?
- The plural of foreboding is forebodings.
Words near foreboding in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: foreboding (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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