foreboding
/fɔːˈbəʊdɪŋ
/noun [mass noun]
A feeling that something bad will happen; fearful apprehension: with a sense of foreboding she read the note...
- When parents bid an emotional farewell to their offspring at the start of a gap year adventure, their minds are often filled with forebodings.
- I am only sorry that all my forebodings have been justified.
- The forebodings of fascism have been in the air for quite some time.
Synonyms
apprehension, apprehensiveness, anxiety, perturbation, trepidation, disquiet, disquietude, unease, uneasiness, misgiving, suspicion, worry, fear, fearfulness, dread, alarm
informal butterflies (in the stomach), the willies, the heebie-jeebies, the jitters, jitteriness, twitchiness
rare inquietude
premonition, presentiment, intuition, feeling, vague feeling, suspicion, inkling, hunch;
warning, omen, portent, sign, token;
prediction, augury, prophecy, presage, prognostication, forecast
informal gut feeling, feeling in one's bones, funny feeling, sixth sense
adjective
Implying that something bad is going to happen: when the Doctor spoke, his voice was dark and foreboding...
- White and a pale sort of foamy green swirled together on the walls, and the doors were dark blue, ominous and foreboding pits that threatened to cave in before bad news.
- Cue a sinister clap of thunder and a foreboding flash of lightning.
- Animal sounds - the call of birds, the cry of small herbivores and the screams of predators - emanated from the foliage, giving it an ominous, foreboding atmosphere.
Derivatives
forebodingly
- He added, forebodingly: ‘It is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on [the War Crimes Act].’
- I had pictured the place as nothing more than a few scattered farmhouses and a fence separating the highway from a faraway, forebodingly off-limits military base.
- ‘I saw him watching me to see my reaction to everything,’ she says forebodingly.