Word: portentously
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...their pretensions of wisdom, politicians are comparatively ignorant of what the great inarticulate mass of U. S. voters think about their manner of government. Jobholders from the President down ache for signs and portents. They watch the tall immobile grass of democracy for surface stirrings. Last week out of Massachusetts came an important sign and portent, a shrill whistling wind, like the first ominous pipings of a hurricane, which swayed the tall grass violently...
...passed the House and went to conference, President Coolidge received its proponents again & again. He yielded stubbornly to their insistences and insisted on points of his own. The new week began with no one, not even President Coolidge, knowing whether Flood Control would be vetoed. Almost like a portent, there went from the White House to Congress the first veto message* this session. In it, President Coolidge disapproved a House bill to create a part-civilian board to supervise national rifle matches. The President said he was advised the bill was unconstitutional since it took from the War Department...
Observers marked these sentiments as the Herald Tribune's first bit of gratuitous Hooverism, perhaps a minor portent...
...they watched their flocks by night, certain Egyptian shepherds beheld, last week, a flaming portent. They saw the famed Luxor-Cairo de Luxe Express dash screeching through the night with two of its sleeping cars afire. For once the poor shepherds, shivering in their rags, were momentarily more fortunate than such de luxe travelers as George Eastman (kodaks). He, clad in silken green pajamas, slumbered in one of the flaming cars...
...they drove their cattle along the roads. The moors stretched out around the village of Upper Hampton where he lived; at night the wind blew a mist across them, muffling soft sounds, making a dog's voice, searching along some far hedgerow, an obscure dangerous signal, a portent of sorrow. The quiet tides of the country, the slow changes of the land and its people, were a solemn whisper always ringing in his ears like the sea's slow music echoing in a shell. It is easy to believe the legends of Hardy which picture...