Word.ws English Dictionary

portending

portending is the present participle and gerund of portend.

Meaning of portend

Verb

portend (third-person singular simple present portends, present participle portending, simple past and past participle portended)

  1. (transitive) To serve as a warning or omen of.
    • A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom, / Real or allegoric, I discern not; Nor when: eternal sure--as without end,1671, John Milton, “The First Book”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 4
  2. (transitive) To signify; to denote.
    • Let it be known that the Rapture portends the End of Days.

Questions about portending

What is portending the present participle and gerund of?
Portending is the present participle and gerund of portend.

Words near portending in the dictionary

  1. portendance
  2. portended
  3. portender
  4. portenders
  5. portendeth
  6. portending
  7. portendment
  8. portendments
  9. Portendorfer
  10. portends
  11. portension

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: portending (page history and authors); portend (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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Cite this entry: “portending.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/portending. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.