The Power of Words

I thought it might be fun to have a "word of the day" today. Harmless, right? Educational, right? I went to dictionary.com and this was their word of the day:

portent \POR-tent\, noun:1. A sign of a coming event or calamity; an
omen.2. Prophetic or menacing significance.3. Something amazing; a marvel.

A comet that year was taken as a portent of some imminent but incalculable
change.-- Patrick Smith

So I was fine with PORTENT as our word of the day until I saw the word IMMINENT in the sample sentence. IMMINENT was the word I flubbed in 6th grade at the district wide spelling bee. I mean really, EMINENT is close enough to IMMINENT, isn't it? Sure I didn't get the glory of being the district wide champ, but I did get an Information Please 1981 almanac that has been really useful in my life. And a hamburger at McDonald's with one of my favorite teachers. Obviously I'm still a little touchy about it.