auspicious
aw-SPISH-usadjMeaning promising good things to come; favorable
Memory hook AW, SPECIAL! a rainbow on race day. On the morning of the big race, a rainbow arches over the track and Tia gasps, “Aw, special!” A sign that things will go well is auspicious.
A sunny sky on opening day was an auspicious start for the new farmers’ market.
In context The team’s first season began on an auspicious note: they won their opening three games, and the coach began to hope for a championship.
Similar promising, favorable, hopeful, encouraging
Opposite ominous, unpromising, inauspicious
From Latin auspicium, the reading of signs in the flight of birds, from auspex, “bird watcher”: avis (bird) + specere (to look).