signifying

Ms. Gaul tellingly zeros in on her interviewees’ sense of the term as signifying “a contrast to anything imported as well as anything produced industrially or on a mass scale.”

The incident was declared a four-alarm fire — signifying a catastrophic blaze that requires the mobilization of significant fire department resources — due to the scale of the structure and the hazardous materials involved.

It’s easy to see the youth as signifying the artist, and the replacement for an art-historical horse likewise standing in for a mule.

It sent a shot across the bow to the rest of the baseball world, signifying that for all the Dodgers’ shortcomings of late, they might finally be clicking into top gear.

Leon punctuated his order with, by my count, 27 exclamation marks, signifying his intense impatience with the quality of the government’s arguments in his courtroom.