Word: portentousness
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...When a Finnish professor discovered a minor new comet, immemorial portent of war, famine and pestilence, the Berlin radio gave hurried reassurance: "These comets have their rational explanation. There is no need to have cold shivers running over your spine...
Faced with the enormous portent of Anglo-U.S. alliance in a postwar world of fewer great powers, Britons had also to face the immensely strong position of the U.S. in such an alliance. Many a Briton might recall that, back in 1929, prescient old George Bernard Shaw had written a play called The Apple Cart. In that play U.S. Ambassador Vanhattan calls on Britain's King Magnus...
...Portent. From Egypt last week came a hopeful ray for another dawn: Cairo turned on its lights, first of the war-benighted cities to do so. From Shepherds Hotel, caravansary for restless polyglots, lights blazed out again on the Mid-East mosaic: tanned cosmopolites sipping gin & limes on Shepheard's terrace; rattletrap taxis twisting up dust from the swarming streets; soft-voiced dragomans swishing at flies and barefooted fellahin ignoring them. Dawn's early ray found Cairo unchanged, unchallenging; but the city was free from fear...
...article written for the CRIMSON, March 15, 1937, by Crane Brinton '19, associate professor of History, greeted to the newcomer among Harvard publications. "Those whose joy is discerning trends will find the Harvard Guardian a portent. Here planned and carried out by undergraduate initiative, is a new periodical devoted wholly to work done in History, Government and Economics. . . It is hoped that the Guardian will survive, for its first number is most encouraging...
Immediately, that fact was encouraging. But in the long view it might be the portent of disaster. If, with the troops moved from China, the Jap took India, shutting off U.S. aid, China's glory might become China's woe, might upset all the United Nations' long-range plans...