ominous

Word family

om·i·nous /ˈɒmɪnəs $ ˈɑː-/ adjectiveadj

WARNmaking you feel that something bad is going to happen 〔使人感到〕不吉利的，不祥的

‘How long will she be ill?’ he asked. There was an ominous silence.

“她的病多久会好？”他问。大家的沉默让人感觉不妙。

The car is making an ominous rattling sound.

汽车在发出一种不妙的咔嗒声。

—ominously adverbadv

The sky looked ominously dark.

天空看上去黑沉沉的，好像要变天。

Examples from the Corpus

ominous• My manager asked for an appointment at nine o'clock on a Monday morning: it sounded ominous.• Another wave crashed onto the deck and the mast made an ominous creaking sound.• Rumblings that the election might be postponed once again have grown after a series of ominous events in recent weeks.• A sequence played amid a storm exudes the right air of ominous foreboding.• The music moves from ominous grooves to all-out instrumental pummeling of the listener -- all in the same piece.• The Straits Times, the government-controlled newspaper, reported the loss in dark, ominous headlines, heavy with foreboding.• It is an ominous metaphor, though.• So was it ever thus, history the source of ominous portent, further nourishing Bobby Robson's anxiety?• No one had taken up Sylvian's work, despite the ominous ruler and ink.• There was an ominous silence in the room.• Katy answered the phone. There was an ominous silence.• I felt as if something ominous was happening even as I sat there watching him.

ominous silence• But the first few readings he had assigned had produced an ominous silence.• There is a deep, ominous silence.• It is an ominous silence; it must be broken.• An ominous silence.. now intervened..

Origin ominous

(1500-1600) Latin ominosus, from omen

om·i·nous adjectiveadj

Chinese

Syllable

Corpus