The word "portents" is correct and usable in written English.
It is most often used to refer to a warning sign of something ominous or dangerous happening in the future. For example, "The dark clouds on the horizon were portents of a coming storm."
But lately the portents have been grim: in the first quarter same-store sales dropped 7%.For insight into what the problem might be, your correspondent turned to his 21-year-old daughter, who lives in London and has a keen interest in such issues.
There would be a search for the new incarnation a gifted boy identified through oracles, portents, clues left by his predecessor, and the intervention of senior lamas.
Acapulco's glittering façades hide a city of slums and a hinterland of mountainous poverty, a breeding-ground of guerrillas, drug gangs and death-squads.For the PRI, the Guerrero vote carried two worrying portents for 2006.
ETHNIC strife, rising prices and sagging approval ratings are poor portents of electoral success.
Admittedly, these observers were watching the skies in the hope of gleaning future portents.
Advertising and get-out-the-vote drives will be paramount, and Mr Romney has far more cash at his disposal than the other candidates (see article).Although Mr Romney's win this week has put him back on track for the nomination, it does hold some unnerving portents for the general election.
If critics rave about the film, that might be another story, but in this corner-cutting, beat-the-strike-deadline summer, the portents are not good.
After that the summer holidays beckon, so most participants have set the weekend of July 14th-15th as the effective deadline for a deal.In one sense the portents are not good, especially on the Unionist side.
Subsequent portents were missed, procedures altered and tests muffed which should have saved the rig.
But by the time the Fed lowered rates again at the end of that month, its move was seen by investors as a sign of desperation.Three months ago Buttonwood pointed to three portents that would suggest investors should prepare for the worst.
NOT since the Middle Ages have men scanned the sky so eagerly for portents.
