ominous synonyms

ominous

modif.

foreboding, portentous, threatening, forbidding, fateful, baleful, menacing, sinister, dark, black, lowering, suggestive, ever-threatening, premonitory, dire, direful, ill-omened, grim, gloomy, haunting, perilous, ill-starred, ill-fated, impending, looming, fearful, clouded, unpropitious, inauspicious, unlucky, forewarning, foreshadowing, presaging, prophetic, of evil portent, apocalyptic; see also dangerous 2, dismal 1, doomed, frightful 1, oracular 2, sinister.

Antonyms favorable*, encouraging*, auspicious.

ominous implies a threatening character but does not necessarily connote a disastrous outcome the request was met by an ominous silence; portentous may imply a foreshadowing, esp. of evil, but is now more often used of that which arouses awe or amazement because of its prodigious or marvelous character a portentous event; fateful may imply a fatal character or control by fate, but is now usually applied to that which is of momentous or decisive significance a fateful decision; foreboding implies a portent or presentiment of something evil or harmful a foreboding anxiety

Webster's New World Roget's A-Z Thesaurus Copyright © 1999 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio.
Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.