Auspicious

How to spell auspicious

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce auspicious

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does auspicious mean?

1. adjectiveShowing signs that something is likely to be successful or favourable.

Auspicious in a sentence

• The launch had an auspicious start, with sales doubling in the first week.

• Signing the contract on her birthday felt like an auspicious moment for the firm.

Where does auspicious come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin auspicium, which meant the practice of reading omens by watching the flight of birds. That noun was built from auspex, the title of an official who performed this divination, a word fused from avis 'bird' and specere 'to look at' or 'to observe'. In ancient Rome no important venture was begun without taking the auspices, so a favourable sighting marked a promising moment to act. English adopted the adjective auspicious in the late 1500s, keeping the sense of a good omen but loosening it to mean simply 'showing signs of future success'. The same specere 'to look' root survives in everyday words such as 'spectator' and 'inspect', and the bird-watching avis lurks in 'aviary' and 'aviation', which is a useful reminder that the tricky middle is spelled auspic, not auspis.

How the word is built

• auspic- (from Latin auspicium: an omen taken from watching birds)
• -ous (adjective suffix meaning 'full of')