Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use ominous in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective

Ominous means of or pertaining to an omen or to omens; being or exhibiting an omen; significant. Example: “Ominous creakings and grindings came from the innards of the machine.”

Examples of ominous by meaning

adjectiveSpecifically, giving indication of a coming ill; being an evil omen.

  • California poll support for Jerry Brown's tax increases has ominous implications for U.S. taxpayers too Los Angeles Times Headline April 25, 2011
  • After growing substantially in the 1990s and modestly in the 2000s, the total number of American kids fell from 2010 through 2019, an ominous milestone.2021 April 23, Ronald Brownstein, “The racist ‘replacement theory’ has it all backward”, in CNN

More sentences with ominous

  • Ominous creakings and grindings came from the innards of the machine.From the entry grinding
  • An ominous alabaster fog settled in the valley.From the entry alabaster
  • The tremor in my left hand is like the ominous grating note of a failing engine.2013, Marcel Theroux, Strange Bodies. From the entry sparking
  • Which means roughly that business keeps one safe from love—ominous talk when one’s lover is a courtesan.2008, Dave Duncan, The Alchemist’s Apprentice, Ace Books, →ISBN, page 114. From the entry apothegm
  • The storms appear ominous enough that officials compiling the bulletin actually wrote, "Could this be snow-mageddon?"2008 December 17, “'Snow-mageddon' in Toronto?”, in CBC News. From the entry snowmageddon
  • Viewing the blood moon as an ominous sign, the Confederates used it to cloak their flight.2006, Georgiana Kotarski, Ghosts of the Southern Tennessee Valley, →ISBN, pages 98–99. From the entry blood moon
  • Her full name sounded very ominous coming now from Nathaniel Sheridan's lips.2002, Meg Cabot, Nicola and the Viscount, HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 244. From the entry Nicola
  • "Risks," in other words, may appear ominous and act as a barrier to thought about the message.1995, Designing Health Messages: Approaches from Communication Theory, →ISBN, page 18. From the entry denotatively
  • So onerous that the dread word “genocide” is being supplanted by even more ominous words—“omnicide” and “geocide.”1989, L. S. Stavrianos, Lifelines from Our Past: A New World History, New York: Pantheon Books, page 238. From the entry omnicide
  • An expectant mother would avoid cyclamen, stepping over it being an ominous sign.1940, Rosetta E. Clarkson, Green Enchantments: The Magic Spell of Gardens, The Macmillan Company, page 268. From the entry cyclamen
  • With bared fangs and bristling necks they advanced slowly toward him, with deep-throated, ominous growls.1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 196. From the entry bull
  • The unusual appearance of nanpies in a place is said to be ominous.1901, Eliza Gutch, Examples of Printed Folk-lore Concerning the North Riding. From the entry nanpie
  • Beyond the avoidable deaths that are already visible, something ominous is happening below the surface in crisis zones.2026 February 8, Jeremy Konyndyk, “The Aftermath of Feeding America’s Credibility Into the Woodchipper”, in The New York Times, New York…. From the entry avoidable
  • I heard an ominous snap as I fell.2022 August 15, Christine Ji, “Broken Ankles and Barriers to Accessibility: Reflections from a Skater-Turned-Scooter Girl”, in The…. From the entry darty
  • As ominous thwacking sounds are heard — she asks some dancers to demonstrate a few moves — Ms.2008 January 22, Charles Isherwood, “The Body of Her Work: Hearing Questions of Life and Death”, in New York Times. From the entry semiaccidentally
  • From Communist China there was only ominous silence.1978, Richard Nixon, RN: the Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Grosset & Dunlap, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 343. From the entry Communist China
  • A window was open, and the crickets were stridulating at an ominous speed in the black motionless foliage.1969, Vladimir Nabokov, Ada or Ardor, Penguin, published 2011, page 191. From the entry stridulate
  • However, on May 29, the situation again became ominous.1966, Edmund S. Wehrle, Britain, China, and the Antimissionary Riots, 1891-1900, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, →LCCN, →OCLC…. From the entry Feng-t'ai
  • The threat of Russian barbarism sweeping over the free world will cast its ominous shadow over us for many, many years.1950 April 24, “A Global View”, in Time. From the entry cast
  • Here and there appeared an ominous but graceful swirl in the water; once there was a muffled curse.1941, The Nation, volume 152, J.H. Richards, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 413. From the entry bananoid
  • Ominous rumors were coming from Sian in the northwest, where Young Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang and his troops were now stationed.1938, Robert Berkov, Strong Man of China: The Story of Chiang Kai-shek, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, page 228. From the entry sian
  • The leader of the hounds broke into cry again, a deep, full-toned, ringing bay, strange, ominous, terribly significant in its power.1915, Zane Grey, chapter 12, in The Lone Star Ranger. From the entry cold sweat
  • The format is simple enough: a few seconds of the poster's face looking regretful with an ominous tone from the film's soundtrack playing underneath.2023 May 15, Matilda Boseley, “'A form of acceptance': TikTok's new trend of 'canon events'”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian…. From the entry regretful
  • Such fluttering sensations of nervousness or sinking feelings of fear are also felt in the stomach when one has to face something ominous.2007, Rajnish Roy, “A Second Brain and Anxieties”, in Rewiring the Brain: Living without Stress and Anxiety through the Power of…. From the entry sinking feeling
  • In flashes, they do transcend their influences--particularly Newman, whose beautifully illogical machinations can morph from dry harmonic plinks to banjolike plonks to ominous, industrial-sounding hums.1999 December 24, Peter Margasak, “Wrist Error”, in Chicago Reader. From the entry banjolike
  • One day the small cottonwool clouds begin to form and soon they become ominous black clouds from which the first big, ploppy drops fall.1992, Jeff Stutchbury, Veronica Stutchbury, Spirit of the Zambezi, page 68. From the entry ploppy
  • Wherever one looks the rate of change on the international scene has achieved dizzying proportions, often with ominous overtones for United States interests.1975 April 11, Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., “Uncle Sam: No More Mr. Nice Guy”, in The New York Times. From the entry precipitator
  • The developing scene had ominous aspects.1963, Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate for Change 1953-1956, Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 168. From the entry Formosa
  • We reached the Point just as a flood of sunset light was dripping from the heavens, staining the lagoon an ominous, sanguinary hue.1929, Robert Dean Frisbee, The Book of Puka-Puka, Eland, published 2019, page 117. From the entry sanguinary
  • The stirring of the wind was pleasantly ominous to Reilly: it was quickening, encouraging, hostile to inertia; it came somewhence and was going somewhither.1922, Katherine (Fullerton) Gerould, Lost Valley, a Novel, Harper, Pennsylvania State University, published 2010, page 437. From the entry somewhither
  • Most ominous of all was the discovery of over six hundred empty cans that had held preserved meat, the main reliance of the expedition.1914, Stephen Leacock, chapter 5, in Adventurers of the Far North, Toronto: Glasgow, Brook, page 123. From the entry reliance
  • All of this is a calculated set-up, Saltburn intended to seduce the viewer with grandeur as much as it might hope to imply ominous things lurking under the surface.2023 November 13, Rosalind Jana, “Saltburn and the bizarre life of Britain's stately homes”, in BBC. From the entry under the surface
  • On Page One, an ominous “refer” (pronounced reefer) to an article inside the paper: Palestinian snipers had killed two Israelis, bringing a retaliatory shelling by Israeli tanks.2021 September 10, Ralph Blumenthal, “A Time Capsule in Two Front Pages”, in The New York Times, New York City. From the entry refer
  • Los Angeles is under permanent lockdown, and daily health checks are mandatory, the sick carted off to the ominous Q-Zone by armed sanitation workers in yellow hazmat suits.2020 December 10, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, “The first movie inspired by the pandemic is here, and it sucks”, in The Onion AV Club, archived…. From the entry cart off
  • There were no tipped-over bottles or clouds of ecto-mist swirling near the baseboards, nothing other than that weird, ominous moaning and the rattling of the walls that accompanied it.2020 March 31, Samantha Irby, Wow, No Thank You.: The #1 New York Times Bestseller, Faber & Faber, →ISBN. From the entry ecto-mist
  • Her saddle-shoed foot catches the ominous green box, and no doubt several of the cookies inside are now crumbled, but hopefully not whatever listening device is in there.2017, Michael Fiegel, “Tag Along”, in Blackbird: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Skyhorse Publishing, →ISBN, pages 145–146. From the entry saddle-shoed
  • It offers few subtleties, but those can be effective, as when the chorus is backlighted in the rear of the auditorium to produce an ominous play of shadows onstage.2007 June 2, James R. Oestreich, “Strange, Faraway Fantasies of Hell and Paradise”, in New York Times. From the entry backlight
  • The prairie with its grass and rolling hills was behind them, and they entered a sparse, dry, rocky country, full of draws and short cañons and ominous buttresses.2005, Will Cook, Until Darkness Disappears, page 54. From the entry broken

Meaning of ominous

  1. adjective Of or pertaining to an omen or to omens; being or exhibiting an omen; significant.
  2. adjective Specifically, giving indication of a coming ill; being an evil omen.

Full definition of ominous

Questions about ominous in a sentence

How do you use ominous in a sentence?
Ominous is used as an adjective. For example: “Ominous creakings and grindings came from the innards of the machine.”
What is a short sentence with ominous?
“The developing scene had ominous aspects.”
What does ominous mean?
Ominous means of or pertaining to an omen or to omens; being or exhibiting an omen; significant.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ominous (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 ominous in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/ominous. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.