A dump from my cubicle’s white-plank.
Portentous
comes from – ‘portend’.
‘por’ – a variation on the prefix ‘pro’, meaning ‘go forward’. Think ‘protrude, protract’ vs ‘extrude, retract,extract’
‘tend’ – from ‘tendere’, meaning to stretch or reach. Think ‘extend‘.
Therefore – Portentous – forward stretching, or foretelling. Reaching beyond the present.
Completely unrelated to:
‘important’
Once you dig that the ‘por’ in portentous is a corrupted prefix, there’s no reason to confuse it with ‘important’. Also ‘important’ has that troublesome ‘a’ in ‘ant’ which really messes up your ‘portent’.
Important, of course means something of import, coming from the shipping term, meaning ‘bringing in’. There’s a n implicit gateway, opening or a door – a portal. French – ouvrez la porte, s’il vous plait.
Bonus words:
‘intent’ – stretch towards
‘retention’ – UNRELATED! comes from ‘tenere’, to hold.
As one professor and etymology-addict used to exclaim: “Doesn’t life make sense when you understand the meaning of words?!!” For those few of us who have it, the passion for etymology runs strong and deep. Preach it, brother!
It’s a breath of fresh air!
I do have one fear – that language evolution is not immune to entropy – that words evolve *away* from their original connotations and senses. But they evolve away without direction or order and become… bland.
It takes a constant influx of energetic, new, words to keep the vigor of our language, as old ones lose their particular unique colors and turn into brown and bleh.
It’s worth fighting to preserve words and to keep meaning in older language, but it’s only prolonging their life, not preventing their demise.
A day will come when we (but not the current we) will have our hands full tracing the roots and documenting the flavours of historic 20th century slang, and won’t have a second free to spare a glance at the Latin stuff.
ok, I’m confused. I can’t find the word “portentIOUS” is any online dictionary, but it appears to be a mis-spelling of the word “portentOUS”. Are they the same thing? Is EVERYONE simply mis-spelling it? *confused*.
Hi Sarah,
Yes, you are right, it is a misspelling.
But the content of the post is correct for ‘portentous’.
No, they are not the same thing because portent*i*ous is not a real word
No, EVERYONE is not misspelling it – just me!
Confused?
Probably because it is so hugely embarrassing to typo the title of an etymology post that no-one (else) does it
Good catch!
I should also mention the subtle difference between sound spelling and “Spelling it as it sounds”.