[Vocabulary] Auspiciously absent

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timberlas

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About the phrase "auspiciously absent". I've run into it in paragraphs like this:

"The sport that has been a mainstay in every modern Olympiad since 1896, the sport that Ancient Greeks competed in during the first staging of the Games, will be auspiciously absent in 2020."

And this:
"The most interesting aspect of Linlithgow Palace is that its architects did not bother including hallways. Yes, there’s a Great Hall where the king would listen to courtiers. But hallways– corridors by which to access seperate rooms– these are auspiciously absent."

And this:
"After a recent trek, I realised that there was a taget that was auspiciously absent from my personal lists of goals. I have on that list the goal of summiting mountains such as Kilimanjaro and Everest Base Camp but none that are located in Malaysia itself. The G12 and G7 are 12 mountains in Malaysia and 7 mountains in Peninsular Malaysia respectively that have peaks above 7000 feet."

I've checked several dictionaries, and the definition is like "promising success, favorable" or something like that. But it doesn't seem to fit. I run out of answers.
 

konungursvia

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I agree with you. It's a silly journalistic attempt at being at once alliterative and antithetical. But it falls flat, and I can't see any real meaning in the phrase. It reminds me of such phrases as "it is not currently known", "the first time in recent memory" and "the Great Storm of 2013" -- newspaper writers pulling tricks to hide their subjectivity.
 

timberlas

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I agree with you. It's a silly journalistic attempt at being at once alliterative and antithetical. But it falls flat, and I can't see any real meaning in the phrase. It reminds me of such phrases as "it is not currently known", "the first time in recent memory" and "the Great Storm of 2013" -- newspaper writers pulling tricks to hide their subjectivity.


Nice. Thank you. You give me the confirmation I need to throw it into dustbin.
 
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