The answer is BODE, four letters. It is an old verb for foretelling that modern English uses mostly in two phrases, bode well and bode ill. If your slot has five squares, write AUGUR instead. Seven squares usually want PRESAGE, and eight can take FOREBODE or THREATEN.
Bode began as a messenger’s verb
Old English had a noun, boda, for a messenger, and a verb built on it, bodian, which meant to proclaim or announce, including announcing something before it happened. That is the whole logic of the word. Something that bodes behaves like a herald: it arrives ahead of the event and tells you what kind of event to expect. By the late fourteenth century the verb had settled into its modern job of giving a good or bad sign of what is coming, and forebode grew up beside it around 1600.
The bare verb now sounds formal, and in everyday writing it rarely appears without well or ill attached. A slow start that does not bode well for the season is about as far as most people take it. Crosswords still use the bare form, because four letters that alternate consonant and vowel will sit almost anywhere.
One oddity is worth knowing. Dictionaries also list bode as a past tense of bide, to wait, so the same four letters belong to two unrelated words. Only the omen sense answers this clue.
Augur was a Roman office before it was a verb
AUGUR is the five-letter answer, and it carries the best story of the group. In ancient Rome an augur was an official whose duty was to observe and interpret signs believed to reveal what lay ahead. Thunder, lightning and the flight and calls of birds all counted as evidence. English borrowed the noun in the 1540s, and the verb, meaning to predict, followed around 1600.
The office survives inside inaugurate. A Roman induction into office included taking the auguries, so an inauguration was, at root, an installation made under good omens. Where the name augur itself comes from is less settled. One proposal ties it to a Latin verb meaning to increase, another to the Latin word for bird, and etymologists have not closed the question.
Watch the spelling. AUGER, with an E, is the tool that bores holes, and it also runs five letters. The two differ only in the fourth square, so a crossing there will catch the mistake before it spreads.
Portend fills from four squares to ten
Find your length first, then read across for the shade of meaning.
| Letters | Answer | What it suggests |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | BODE | The default, a plain verb for giving a sign |
| 4 | OMEN | Usually a noun, but dictionaries accept it as a verb |
| 4 | LOOM | Something threatening is about to arrive |
| 5 | AUGUR | Prediction with a Roman pedigree |
| 7 | PRESAGE | Formal register, the closest match in tone |
| 7 | BETOKEN | Old fashioned, to be a token of |
| 8 | FOREBODE | The longer cousin of BODE, usually about trouble |
| 8 | THREATEN | Only a bad outcome is on the way |
| 10 | FORESHADOW | A hint planted early, often in a story |
One letter separates Portend from Portent
Check the final letter of the clue word, because Portent, with a T, is a noun and wants a different answer. Portend is a verb, so it asks for BODE, AUGUR or PRESAGE. Portent is the sign itself, which is where OMEN, SIGN and AUGURY live. Inflections follow the same rule: Portends needs a final S, as in BODES or AUGURS, and Portended wants a past tense such as BODED.
Both clue words come from Latin portendere, to foretell or point out, which originally meant to stretch forward. The adjective portentous has since drifted. It still means ominous, but dictionaries also give it the sense of pompous or pretentiously weighty, the tone of a speech that sounds more important than it is.
Sorting BODE, OMEN and LOOM at four squares
All three fit four blanks, and they barely overlap. OMEN shares no letter position with either of the others, while BODE and LOOM agree only on the O in the second square. Any crossing except that second one settles the entry at once. If an O in square two is all you have, OMEN is out and you are choosing between a sign and a threat. A neutral clue leans toward BODE, while a clue with menace in it, or a sense of something large on the horizon, leans toward LOOM.
