Word.ws English Dictionary

portends

portends is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 portends

What is portends the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Portends is the third-person singular simple present indicative of portend.

Words near portends in the dictionary

  1. portendeth
  2. portending
  3. portendment
  4. portendments
  5. Portendorfer
  6. portends
  7. portension
  8. portensions
  9. portent
  10. portention
  11. portentions

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: portends (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: “portends.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/portends. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.