portentous

p. 135. "I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade."

Definition: ominous, arousing awe or amazement; marvelous

portentous (adjective)

portentously (adverb)

portentousness (noun)

Gutierrez, Chairman of the Democratic Caucus Immigration Task Force, is fond of portentous pronouncements.

Based on Pete Davies's book All Played Out, it tends towards the portentous, with an epigraph from Churchill