Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use foreboding in a sentence

12 example sentences · noun, adjective

Foreboding means a sense of evil to come. Example: “The child walked nervously down the dark, foreboding street.”

Examples of foreboding by meaning

nounA sense of evil to come.

  • 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
  • I feel a slight foreboding about going home this year.1976 December 25, John Atteridg, “Going Home for the Holidays”, in Gay Community News, volume 4, number 26, page 18

More sentences with foreboding

  • The child walked nervously down the dark, foreboding street.From the entry forboding
  • A sense of foreboding, almost like a Spidey-sense, tingled at the back of my neck.2010, Tate Hallaway [pseudonym; Lyda Morehouse], Honeymoon of the Dead, New York, N.Y.: Berkley Books, →ISBN. From the entry spidey-sense
  • Austere, foreboding, it rises on a stonebound table over a tributary of the Loire.1983, Darwin Porter, George McDonald, Frommer’s Dollarwise Guide to France, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 194. From the entry stonebound
  • As I tentatively reverse, I have a sense of foreboding, unsure I’ll be able to control this overgrown mechanical beast.2023 November 5, Andrew Anthony, “Monsters of the road: what should the UK do about SUVs?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN. From the entry hatchback
  • The bad dream room was dark and dismal, and in this room she saw a dark foreboding figure.2012, Les Brann, Jacky Owens, Ann Williamson, The Handbook of Contemporary Clinical Hypnosis: Theory and Practice, Wiley-Blackwell, page 541. From the entry dream room
  • But the molehill grew, nearly overnight, and became a spooky and spinely, foreboding range known as the Belgies.2010, Phil Drake, Fat Chance. From the entry spinely
  • Those setbacks have contributed to a partywide sense of foreboding about keeping the White House in Republican hands.2007 August 14, Adam Nagourney, “Rove Legacy Laden With Protégés”, in New York Times. From the entry partywide
  • Some writers have used the term rectophobia to describe a condition of morbid foreboding, claimed to be peculiar to patients afflicted with rectal disease.1914, A. Bennett Cooke, A treatise on diseases of the rectum and anus. From the entry rectophobia
  • 'Illumined' also carries its own gothic charge, and what she glimpses is not therefore a passenger ship but a ship of death, more foreboding than inviting.2008, David Pierce, “Saying Goodbye in ‘Eveline’: Emigration · The Language of ‘Eveline’”, in Reading Joyce, Abingdon, Oxfordshire; New…. From the entry glimpse
  • I thought of children released from school; I thought of spring-awakenings after winter-sleeps; I thought of the Sleeping Beauty; and I also thought, with some foreboding, of catatonics, suddenly frenzied.1973, Oliver Sacks, Awakenings, unnumbered page. From the entry catatonic

Meaning of foreboding

  1. noun A sense of evil to come.
  2. noun An evil omen.
  3. adjective Of ominous significance; serving as an ill omen; foretelling of harm or difficulty.

Full definition of foreboding

Questions about foreboding in a sentence

How do you use foreboding in a sentence?
Foreboding is used as a noun and adjective. For example: “The child walked nervously down the dark, foreboding street.”
What is a short sentence with foreboding?
“The child walked nervously down the dark, foreboding street.”
What does foreboding mean?
Foreboding means a sense of evil to come.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: foreboding (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use foreboding in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/foreboding. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.