The face I imagined bore scars from repeated beatings, the body bruised and welted in an ominous, indiscernible pattern.

Robert Teeter, a top Bush strategist, said that the Administration's actions should not be seen as an ominous pattern by civil rights groups.

Church talked with his staff that day about what he saw as an ominous pattern of events.

The half-and-half formed an ominous pattern on the surface, but it tasted O.K.

The murderer's trademark, tearing one dangling pierced earring from each of the victims, becomes an ominous and unsettling pattern.

Those warning signs include both actions and spoken words of hopelessness, intense anger, or unexplained late happiness, which can reveal an ominous pattern.

Liet-Kynes turned his gaze from the military drills to the bilious sky, which bore ominous patterns he'd been taught to recognize.

A minority, however, sees a more ominous pattern.

But the most ominous pattern of mass terrorist killings in the 1990's has been traced to the Saudi businessman Osama bin Laden and his allies.

One ominous pattern is the "one-two punch" that the jihad network strives to deliver.