promising

1 having qualities which inspire hope a promising writer who just may write the great American novel someday Synonyms auspicious, bright, encouraging, fair, golden, heartening, likely, optimistic, hopeful, propitious, roseate, rose-colored, rosy, upbeatRelated Words cheering, comforting, reassuring, soothing; assured, confident, decisive, doubtless, positive, sure, unhesitating; beamish, bullish, eupeptic; favorable, goodNear Antonyms cheerless, comfortless; doubtful, dubious, uncertain; bearish, grim, negative, unfavorable; funereal, glum, gray (also grey), miserable, wretchedAntonyms bleak, dark, depressing, desperate, discouraging, disheartening, dismal, downbeat, dreary, gloomy, hopeless, inauspicious, pessimistic, unencouraging, unlikely, unpromising, unpropitious

2 pointing toward a happy outcome all the signs for the new business are promising Synonyms auspicious, bright, encouraging, golden, heartening, hopeful, favorable, propitiousRelated Words fortunate, fortuitous, happy, lucky, providential; advantageous, beneficial, profitable, prosperous, salutaryNear Antonyms unfortunate, unhappy, unlucky; calamitous, catastrophic, disastrous, fatal, ruinous; baleful, dark, dire, direful, doomy, foreboding, gloomy, ill, ill-boding, menacing, minatory, ominous, portentous, sinister, threateningAntonyms dim, discouraging, disheartening, futureless, hopeless, inauspicious, unfavorable, unpromising, unpropitious